


sleep, and dream of me

by AnonTheMoose



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: (VERY worried friends), But He Gets There, Exhaustion, Grantaire and Enjolras haven't met yet in this life, Grantaire and Enjolras start to remember their past life via dreams, Grantaire doesn't even know Enjolras' name at the start, Holding Hands, Kisses, M/M, Painting, Reincarnation, Reunion, Sleep Deprivation, a bit of remembered violence in the first dream but nothing gory or detailed, but only in bits and pieces at first, delirium as a result of sleep deprivation, excessive drinking of coffee in an effort to stay awake, first chapter is the complete story, more painting, not beta'd (but if anyone wants to volunteer...), second chapter is a rambling account of what happened next that never made it into story format, worried friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:52:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8639587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonTheMoose/pseuds/AnonTheMoose
Summary: Grantaire dreams about gunfire, and fingers twined warmly with his own, and he paints and he paints yet can never get the images out of his head. Images of a blond man, always surrounded by red – red jacket, red flags, red blood – who shines like the sun and calls to Grantaire like a siren. For days, this goes on; this… fixation on this man he’s never met, never seen; these flashbacks of memories he hasn’t lived. And then he runs into a man whose blond hair shines golden in the sunlight and who stares at Grantaire with a slack jaw and wide eyes and who says haltingly, “I… I know you.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Guys what am I supposed to do with these two. What am I supposed to do. Everyone goes on about how Romeo and Juliet are the greatest literary tragedy ever, but come on. Let’s be real. Enjolras and Grantaire are the fucking tragedy here.
> 
> Additionally, this chapter is the complete story, but chapter two is a SparkNotes version of what happens next. Initially, all that was going to be in the story as a whole, but there was something about the pacing that changed, and the whole end of it just refused to behave. So I decided to end on a strong note and finish the story well, instead of letting it taper off weakly, and then I uploaded a spiel about what happened afterwards as chapter two, in ramble-format rather than in story-format. Enjoy!

The first time, Grantaire dreams of a room full of faceless men in uniforms, and a golden man standing backed against a window, head bowed in defeat and a splash of blood on his temple, dawn light spilling through the window to surround him like a halo.

 

In the dream, Grantaire announces something that makes all those in the room turn to him, and he takes the opportunity to cross the room and stand shoulder to shoulder with the golden man, face turned towards him.

 

He feels his lips move again, but he can’t hear what he says, and the golden man smiles softly at him, eyes crinkling warmly, and extends his hand palm up into the space between them.

 

Grantaire reaches back, and their fingers tangle warmly together, and the golden man hasn’t even finished forming his smile before the sound of gunfire tears through the silence, and agony sears through his chest and the fingers tangled warmly with his are pulled away –

 

– and Grantaire wakes with a strangled shout, limbs flailing wildly as he fights to escape whatever it is that he’s trapped in, whatever it is that’s keeping him pinned, and his hands are roaming desperately over his chest, his stomach, looking for the wounds, looking for the _bullet holes_ that he knows are there _,_ and he can’t _breathe,_ he’s _bleeding out_ ––

 

There’s a thud as he flails himself right off his bed, and the impact of hitting the floor knocks all the breath from his lungs and is what finally shocks him properly out of the dream, and he lies on his floorboards tangled helplessly in his sheets and gasps and gasps as he tries to catch his breath.

 

The door of his bedroom crashes open, and Joly and Bousset burst in, looking wild-eyed and dishevelled. Joly’s wearing a shirt that only has two buttons done up and is slipping off one shoulder, glasses barely holding onto his face, and Bousset’s in a pair of low-slung boxer shorts, and they explode into the room like they’re not sure what they’re about to find but they’re ready to fight whatever it is.

 

“R?” Bousset asks, spotting him on the floor by his bed, and then they’re both there, hands on his shoulders and his back as they sit him up and babble worried-sounding questions at him.

 

“I’m fine,” Grantaire replies, as they help extract him from his prison of blankets, but his words are thoroughly undermined by the way his voice and his hands are both shaking, and the way his lungs are still stuttering behind his ribs.

 

“Yeah, sure, you look it,” Bousset mutters, as Joly takes one of Grantaire’s hands and presses it flat against his own chest so Grantaire can feel the rise and fall of his friend’s ribs.

 

“Breathe,” Joly says sternly, and Grantaire struggles to copy the med student, struggles to wrangle his still gasping breath into something resembling order.

 

There’s a large part of him that’s flushing in embarrassment at all this, because he might not have any idea where it came from – has no idea what inspired it – but the weird dream with the golden man was clearly just that; a _dream,_ and as the sharpness of it is starting to fade, he’s aware that this is an absurd reaction to have to a dream. So he had a nightmare, so what. He’s had nightmares before. Everyone has. They’ve never resulted in him lying half-tangled in his bedclothes on the floor gasping as though he’s just dodged a drowning while Bousset and Joly try to coach him back into a regular breathing pattern.

 

But a larger part of him – the part that has his lungs seizing and catching in his chest and his heart thudding loudly against his ribs – is convinced, still, that he was just _shot_ , that several bullets have just torn through his flesh and his bones and his organs and he’s _bleeding,_ he’s lying on the dirty floorboards of a room with one window, bleeding out next to a man who shines like the sun and smiled at him moments before they were killed together.

 

He’s not, though. He’s lying on dirty floorboards, yes, but they’re the floorboards of his bedroom, and he’s not bleeding, he’s checked, he’s run his hands all over his torso, and Joly and Bousset are with him now too, and they’re not reacting with panic and horror over his bullet-ridden chest, so. So he’s not shot. He’s not dead or dying. He’s ok. He’s fine. It was just a dream.

 

Just a dream. Just a dream.

 

He focusses on the sound of Joly’s voice as his friend coaches him on when to breathe in, when to breathe out – focusses on the feel of Joly’s chest rising and falling under Grantaire’s hand, focusses on the hard floorboards beneath him and the soft blankets tangled around his legs and the grounding touch of Bousset’s hand on his shoulder, and tries to push the dream from his mind.

 

“You were shouting,” Joly says, when Grantaire has managed to slow his breath to something resembling normal. “We thought you were being murdered.”

 

“I was,” Grantaire says, murmurs, and he hasn’t quite managed to push the dream out of his head yet, because his eyes are open but his gaze is distant as he recalls the dimly lit room, the rapport of the guns, the flare of agony, the sensation of warm fingers jerking out of his hold and slipping away into the dark.

 

“Grantaire,” Bousset says, and the use of his full name from him has Grantaire blinking up at him in time to see the other man look of concern. “R, it was just a dream.”

 

“Yeah,” Grantaire says, blinking and jerking his head a little in the hopes of snapping out of his daze. “Yeah, a dream. I was murdered. In the dream.”

 

“That… sounds unpleasant,” Bousset says eventually, and Grantaire swallows.

 

“It really was,” he says, rubbing one hand over his (whole, undamaged, not _bleeding_ ) chest, and then he frowns and pulls his hand away, blinking down at his fingers in blank surprise.

 

“R?” Joly says, concerned. “What is it?”

 

Grantaire curls his fingers in over his palm and drops his hand into his lap.

 

“Nothing,” he lies.

 

Joly and Bousset peer worriedly at him for another moment.

 

“Are you sure?” he asks.

 

Grantaire can still feel the pressure against his fingers, where the golden man held his hand before they were murdered together. His hand feels so empty now.

 

“I’m sure,” he says, striving to sound convincing.

 

Joly and Bousset don’t look convinced.

 

“Sorry – for waking you,” he says after a moment. “I – thanks, for coming to my rescue. Even though you thought I was being murdered.”

 

“ _Even though_ , he says, like that didn’t have us rushing in here faster, thinking someone was gutting him for stealing their girl,” Bousset scoffs, and something warm curls in Grantaire’s chest at the gruff affection and helps him settle just that little bit more.

 

“I’m just going to,” Grantaire says, extracting himself the rest of the way out of his tangled bedding. “Paint. For a bit. See if I can, you know. Reset.”

 

Painting always calms him down. Soothes him. Part of him is still flushing about reacting so strongly to a mere nightmare, but most of him is still keyed up and adrenalized, and painting will help him settle his heartbeat and breath back to normal, and he might even be able to calm down enough to go back to sleep later. He’s got a class first thing in the morning, and the last thing he needs is to be rocking up out of his mind with sleep depravation.

 

“Are you sure?” Joly asks after a moment, and he and Bousset both help Grantaire escape his tangle nest of blankets, and the three of them pull each other to their feet.

 

Grantaire nods firmly in response to the question.

 

“Yeah, I’ll just – it’ll help me settle down. I’m wide awake now. If I paint for a while I might be able to fall asleep after.”

 

“Ok,” Joly says, but he and Bousset are still looking at him with concern. Usually, Grantaire would pull up a smile to reassure them – quirk his lips up in a self-depreciating grin and make some kind of comment, but he’s still kind of half in the dream, and now that he’s mentioned painting it’s the only thing he wants to do, and he can’t quite work out how to pull his facial muscles the way they need to be pulled in order to give the impression of reassurance, so  instead he nods vaguely at them, and makes his way out of his room.

 

Behind him, unnoticed, Bousset gathers up the fallen bedclothes by the edge and flicks them so that they drape themselves over the mattress again, unmade, but better than the crumpled mess they had been on the floor moments ago, and then he follows Grantaire and Joly out into the living room.

 

Joly gives Grantaire a last look of concern as the other man starts picking his way through the cluttered, barely neat living room, and then turns and vanishes into his room, and Bousset makes to follow, but pauses just inside the doorway.

 

“R?” he calls, and Grantaire pauses, looking back.

 

Technically, it’s only Joly and Grantaire who are roommates, but Bousset’s here so frequently that he might as well be on the lease too. Grantaire doesn’t know exactly what the nature of Joly and Bousset’s relationship is, but he knows Bousset spends almost every night at this apartment, but he never sleeps on the couch. Definitions don’t really matter, though. They’ve both been his friends for years, and they’ve been whatever they are for almost as long as he’s known them. So long as Joly and Bousset are both happy, Grantaire doesn’t care what their relationship status is or isn’t.

 

“What was the dream about?” Bousset asks into the silence, and Joly’s face reappears over Bousett’s shoulder, inquiring and curious.

 

Grantaire feels his brows pull down into a thoughtful frown as he shifts his gaze to the carpet, and his tongue flashes out to wet his lips as he tries to capture the essence of the dream and put it into words. So many things happened, for such a short dream – there were so many impressions and feelings and elements to it, and he struggles for a moment to find a way to describe it all.

 

“They executed a god,” he says eventually, barely louder than a murmur, still frowning thoughtfully at the carpet. “And the god let me stand beside him while they did it.”

 

Joly and Bosset both frown again in concern at that, but Grantaire doesn’t notice, still frowning thoughtfully and already turning away as he heads to the corner that houses his art supplies, and if either of the others says anything, he doesn’t hear them as he sets out the drop-sheet and easel by rote.

 

He pulls a large square canvass out of the stack of various sized ones that he has leaning against the wall, sets it on the easel, and finds his paints. He does it all on autopilot, absent and by memory, as most of his attention drifts back to the dream.

 

(Joly and Bousset both watch him from the doorway of Joly’s room for a while, both their faces taught with worry, because they’ve seen Grantaire in a lot of states over the years, but distant and lost in his own head after waking up screaming isn’t one of them, and they’re concerned about this, but it’s clear that he doesn’t even register that either of them are still watching him, and eventually – when it becomes apparent that he’s settled into painting and there’s nothing they can do unless they want to watch him until he’s finished – they exchange a glance and withdraw, closing the bedroom door behind them.)

 

Grantaire notices none of that, absorbed fully in what he’s doing, and he paints practically blindly, most of his thoughts on the dream while his hand moves the brush in swirls and lines of its own accord.

 

He tries to remember as many facets of the dream as he can, but no matter how hard he tries, the only thing he can remember with full clarity is the golden man. Everything else is… unclear. Blurry and indistinct. Out of focus, while the golden man is fully crystal clear.

 

This becomes further apparent when Grantaire sets his brush into the water cup an indeterminate amount of later and finally glances properly at what he’s been painting, and the golden man stares back at him, captured in that moment where he looked up at Grantaire’s spoken words and stared at him with an expression of surprised wonder.

 

The man’s face is the only thing in focus, the background a muted blur of reds and blues, but every detail in the man’s features is exactly how Grantaire recalls them from his dream.

 

Blond hair, cascading over one side of his face and somehow more than wavy yet not quite all the way to being curly. A jawline that could cut glass, the furrow between his brows, cupid’s bow lips parted in surprise, gold-flecked blue eyes wide with wonder. The stubble over his jaw is evenly spread but short – the stubble of a man who usually keeps his face clean shaven but who hasn’t had time in the last few days to get at a shaving kit and a mirror. The blood that originates from a graze at his temple, that trails in lines down the side of his face and smudges across his cheek. The golden light that spills from behind him and highlights his hair, casting thin shadows across his face that only serve to make him look more ethereal; makes it look as though he is an angel with a halo of sunlight.

 

He is tragic, and oh so very, very beautiful.

 

Grantaire stares at the painting for a long moment, and then blinks to shake himself out of his stupor and begins to pack up his things.

 

A few minutes later, clean up complete, he flicks off the living room lights and crosses to his bedroom, then pauses and looks back at the painting from his doorway. The golden man is illuminated by moonlight, and Grantaire has never seen a man so beautiful.

 

He turns and walks to his bed, collapses facedown on top of the covers, and sleeps dreamlessly until his alarm goes off early the next morning.

 

\------------

 

Joly and Bousset are in the kitchen when he staggers out in search of coffee.

 

“You look… well rested,” Bousset says, taking in Grantaire’s heavily-lidded eyes, faltering gait, and paint-splattered torso and pyjama pants (which – ugh. He always gets paint all over himself whenever he works, which is why he usually wears an old paint-flecked shirt whenever he gets his brushes out, but he hadn’t bothered last night, too in the zone to worry about finding his smock, so instead he’s wound up with flecks all over his bare chest, and he’s probably managed to smear paint all over his bedcovers, too, which – fantastic, that’s great).  

 

Grantaire grunts.

 

“Nice work on that,” Joly says, gesturing with his spoon to the painting still sitting on the easel in the corner, and Grantaire turns to look. The way the morning sun spills across the golden man’s face makes Grantaire’s breath catch in his throat and his heart seize in his chest. It was by the light of the morning sun that they shot him. Shot _them._

 

“Who is it?” Joly is asking, and Grantaire has to shake his head to clear it.

 

 _Dream, Grantaire,_ he says to himself _. It was just a dream. You shouldn’t be so affected by it in the morning light._

 

“Uh, I don’t actually know,” he answers, and the words are hoarse in his throat. “My dream last night. He was in it.”

 

“Was he the… god that they executed?” Bousset asks, tone careful, like he’s not sure he’s got the words right, and Grantaire presses his lips together in a thin line and breathes out sharply through his nose, because that phrase elicits a sharp pain behind his ribs.

 

“Yes,” he says shortly, and then turns away from the painting and reaches clumsily for the coffee.

 

The coffee is black and bitter and exactly what he needs, and it wakes him up more fully than his shrieking alarm clock had.

 

“So this dream,” Joly starts behind him, setting his bowl of cereal down on the counter. “What happened in it, exactly? Because you woke up yelling like someone was gutting you, but all you’ve said is that you were murdered, and, you know – that sort of thing usually has some kind of lead up. A backstory, if you will.”

 

“I was shot,” Grantaire answers shortly, and then drains the rest of his coffee in a few gulps and refills his mug again. “They were going to shoot him, so I went and stood beside him and they shot us both.”

 

“They? Who are _they?_ ” Joly asks, as Bousset says, “You went and stood beside someone who was about to be _shot?_ ”

 

Grantaire swipes a hand down his face.

 

“I don’t know, alright,” he says. “It’s all… blurry. And – it doesn’t matter, anyway. It was just a dream.”

 

He wonders why he feels like a liar for that last bit.

 

“You just seem,” Joly says, and hesitates.

 

“Majorly out of it,” Bousset supplies helpfully. “I know you’re not a morning person on the best of days, R, but you’re not usually _this…_ completely spaced out.”

 

Grantaire sighs.

 

“I’m just tired, I guess,” he says. “I have class. I’d better get ready.”

 

He takes his mug and leaves the kitchen, aiming for his room to grab some clothes before he heads into the shower, leaving Joly and Bousset to watch him depart.

 

As he crosses the living room, his gaze goes to the half-dried painting, which sits practically glowing in the morning sun.

 

\------------

 

Grantaire wakes up more and more the longer the day goes on – starts to feel more and more distant from the dream – and he almost feels normal by the time he arrives home that night.

 

And if his notes from the day have a variety of partial sketches scattered throughout them in the borders that may or may not be various features of the nameless golden man from his dream – the slope of a nose here, the curve of a lightly stubbled jaw there, bowed lips sketched in an empty space, the long line of a neck joining a collarbone in a bottom corner of the page – well. Grantaire’s notes _always_ have sketches in the borders, so.

 

Joly and Bousset seem relieved when he gets home that he’s more or less himself. He must have been really out of it this morning for them to be so obviously relieved when he comes swanning in the door with a rambling-yet-vicious complaint about the uselessness of his Renaissance History teacher.

 

The three of them bicker their way through making dinner, Joly doesn’t stir the sauce frequently enough and it catches and burns on the bottom of the pan, and he’s kicked out of the kitchen and told he’s on wash up duty, and he goes with a laugh and no complaints.

 

After dinner and a couple of beers apiece (eaten and drunk on their one couch in the living room, the three of them only fitting into the two-seater because both Grantaire and Bousset are half-sitting on Joly), they browse Netflix for a while and exclaim with equal parts horror and delight over Gordon Ramsay’s reactions to a shitty hotel in some snow-coated state in America, and finally Bousset and Joly extract themselves out of the tangle of limbs and say their goodnights, arguing as they go about whether or not log cabin or ranch design would be a more appealing theme for the country lodge they’ve decided to build.

 

The door closes behind them, and Grantaire is alone in the living room with just the credits for company.

 

Netflix begins the countdown to the next queued episode as Grantaire’s eyes trail through the living room to the corner with his easel.

 

The moonlight from the windows is splattered prettily across the face of the now-dry painting, and something twists in Grantaire’s chest at the sight of those eyes, wide and bright and so surprised.

 

He looks away and pulls himself to his feet, running a hand through his hair and turning resolutely away from the painting.

 

He’s tired. He had a rather broken sleep last night, and he has to be up early again tomorrow for class, so as tempting as Gordon Ramsay’s dulcet tones are, he really should go to bed.

 

He goes through his usual nightly routine and falls into bed feeling still wide awake and predicting that it will be an hour at least before he manages to drop off. To his surprise, however, almost as soon as his head hits the pillow, he’s asleep.

 

\------------

 

He dreams of a room full of enraptured men, whose collective attention never waivers from the one speaking to them – the golden man.

 

The words themselves are lost, somewhere, but even if Grantaire can’t hear what’s being said, he can clearly see the man striding to and fro between the tables, just a few short feet from where Grantaire himself is sitting.

 

The golden man is alive with energy, brimming with an enthusiasm that spills out of him with every movement, lit with an inner fire that only ads to his overall golden glow as he speaks a constant stream of passionate words, lectures proudly to the gathered men.

 

They don’t take their eyes off him, mesmerised and enthralled by whatever it is he’s saying, and the spell of silence is broken only when one or more of the men shout an agreement or a join together in a wordless cheer.

 

Grantaire may not be able to hear what the golden man is saying, but that doesn’t mean he’s any less entranced than the other men. His eyes track every movement the man makes – catalogues the length of his stride, the gestures of his hands and arms, the expressions that cross his face, the shapes his lips make as he forms words that Grantaire still can’t hear.

 

Grantaire couldn’t look away if he tried.

 

Which means he’s looking straight at the golden man when – for the first time the man’s gaze raises to meet Grantaire’s, and the two of them lock eyes for a moment that stretches, endless, into eternity.

 

Grantaire wakes with a gasp.

 

He lies staring at the ceiling for a long few minutes, breathing deliberately evenly as he presses a hand to his chest and tries to calm his heartbeat as he attempts to parse this latest dream.

 

This is better than last night, at least. He’s not woken up yelling and riddled with phantom bullet holes and having some kind of panic attack on his floorboards while a freshly woken Joly and Bousset fret over him, so. That’s something, he guesses.

 

His fingers are itching, though, and the dream is rolling around and around in his head – the flicker of firelight on the golden man’s face, the shape of his hands as he gestures about something, the loose tie of his thin neck scarf swinging with every move he makes. Grantaire wishes he’d been able to hear what it was that he was saying as he strode about the room, the centre of everyone’s attention and a tangible sense of passion and righteousness rolling off him.

 

Grantaire rolls out of bed without even really deciding to, and this time he remembers to grab his art shirt from where its hanging on the back of his door as he goes out to the living room, moving quietly and only turning on the lamp in his art corner instead of the room lights, so that he doesn’t wake Joly or Bousset.

 

Last night’s painting is long-since dried by now, so he finishes shrugging into his smock and takes the square canvas down to lean it gently against the wall instead, and fishes out a slightly larger, rectangular canvas from the stacked pile, loading that up onto the easel and getting out his paints.

 

He doesn’t think about what he’s going to paint – just sets the brush to the canvas and starts moving as his thoughts spin back to the dream again, and slowly, slowly, the picture takes shape.

 

The golden man is at one end of the canvas, resplendent in red and white and gold, and surrounded by the light of dozens of candles, hands raised in a graceful-yet-forceful gesture and a fiercely passionate expression on his face.

 

The room takes form around him, almost of its own accord – it spills out from the golden man and grows darker and more poorly lit the further away from him it gets, until the canvas is almost completely in shadow at the end that the golden man is furthest from.

 

Up until he’d painted it, Grantaire wouldn’t have been able to tell you what the room looked like – his entire attention had been focussed on the golden man in the dream, to the extent that it’s something of a wonder that Grantaire even noticed that there were other men in the room at all – and yet here it is; all wooden walls and rough-hewn wooden furniture, candle-lit and with patches of melted wax here and there, rough around the edges and with low-hanging exposed wood beams crossing the ceiling.

 

The room is full of men, all of them facing the golden man and all of them wearing loose, long-sleeved shirts underneath fitted vests of various colours.

 

It’s all very… 1800’s. Grantaire has no idea why his dream has elected to set itself in the 1800’s, but he doesn’t spend any time pondering it.

 

The men’s clothes might be clear, but their faces aren’t. They’re all facing the golden man anyway, so for the most part it’s only the backs of their heads that are shown – but for those whose profiles _are_ in sight, their features are all… bland and empty, somehow. They have noses and lips and eyes and eyebrows, yes, but there is nothing definitive about the features – nothing that defines them against any other man. They could each be anybody, or nobody.

 

The golden man, however, is a clear contrast. Every single aspect of him is crystal clear, from the black stitching attaching his golden buttons to his fitted red jacket to the impassioned furrow of his eyebrows to the light sparking deep in his blue eyes to shadows cast across his face from the candlelight to the twist of his mouth as he says something. His features are as clear as though he’d been standing right in front of Grantaire while the painting was created.

 

This one takes longer than the one the night before, due both to the larger size of the canvas and the level of detail involved in painting so many different details – cracks and whorls in the wooden walls and creases in the worn clothes and the reflected light off so many half-full-to-empty bottles of wine – and by the time Grantaire is putting the finishing touches to the painting, he can feel sleep clawing at the backs of his eyelids, pulling at his limbs.

 

He adds a final swipe of colour – one last flick of fire to one last candle – and packs up his gear by rote before going to flop face down on his bed, where he passes out instantly.

 

When he wakes the next morning to slap irritatedly at his alarm, its to find he’d forgotten to take his painting shirt off before collapsing across his covers.

 

His swearing brings Bousset to the doorway.

 

“Good morning,” the obnoxiously cheerful man says, and Grantaire grunts at him as he peels himself off his covers and blearily inspects the damage. At this rate, these bedsheets are going to have to be relegated to dropsheets.

 

“Nice work on that out there,” Bousset says, gesturing towards the living room with his mug of coffee, because he is a terrible tease who doesn’t understand the torture of seeing and smelling someone else’s coffee when you yourself haven’t had one yet. “Two pieces in two days, impressive. Have you got a practical assessment due or something?”

 

“No,” Grantaire grunts, giving up on picking the paint off his blankets and instead shucking the art shirt off and throwing it in the vague direction of its peg on the back of the door. It lands in a crumpled heap at Bousset’s feet, and the man bends down to pick it up by the collar and hang it over the hook on the door, because he is capable of being nice on occasion.

 

“Is this all from that dream you had the other night?” Bousset asks, and Grantaire is taking back the “nice” comment, because Bousset is actually horrible morning person who can’t see how much Grantaire is struggling with merely being awake and finding a clean shirt right now, to say nothing of making conversation.

 

“Had another one,” he says, and is inordinately proud of himself when the words come out more or less clearly. “Woke up. Painted. Slept. _Coffee.”_

 

That last is less of a statement of his last night’s timetable, and more an admission of defeat as he abandons his search for a clean shirt and staggers out past Bousset in the direction of the kitchen, clad only in his paint-splattered pyjama pants. At least his chest isn’t paint-flecked today. Go him.

 

“You had another one?” Bousset asks, trailing Grantaire into the kitchen and sounding slightly concerned. Grantaire wonders for a vague moment where Joly is, then remembers that the other man has an 8 am class that he’ll have left for already.

 

“Not like the first one,” Grantaire mumbles, fumbling with the mugs in the cupboard in search for one large enough, and grimacing at the clanging sound of the all the mugs clanging together. “He was speaking. To everyone. Couldn’t hear him.”

 

He’s not making much sense, he is distantly aware, but he’s only just woken up, and he’s a little bit sleep deprived, so. He figures he can be forgiven. He finds a mug and pours himself a generous serve of coffee, gulping it down in a few huge mouthfuls before filling it straight back up again.

 

“What do you mean?” Bousset asks, and at least he waited til Grantaire had some coffee in him before continuing the conversation.

 

“It was,” Grantaire says, and then pauses to run a hand over his face and through his hair, trying to order his words and blink his way to full wakefulness. “We were in a room. I was in the back corner. He was speaking to everyone. Giving a – speech, I guess.”

 

“A speech about what?” Bousset asks, and Grantaire tries to think about whether or not he’s ever been as curious about someone else’s dreams as Bousset appears to be about his.

 

Grantaire shrugs, and takes another mouthful of coffee. He can feel that first cup starting to bleed into his bloodstream now, and he’s starting to feel more awake as a result.

 

“Don’t know. Couldn’t hear what he was saying. Whatever it was, though,” Grantaire says, gaze going distant as he pictures the golden man’s face; the verve in all his motions. “He was pretty convinced by it,” he settles on saying eventually, and can still picture the light in the man’s eyes as he strode around the room.

 

Bousset’s frowning again, a worried crease between his brows, but Grantaire barely notices as he drains his second coffee and heads out of the kitchen, leaving Bousset frowning behind him.

 

\---------------

 

The day drags and drags, and Grantaire was already pretty bloody tired, but then he finally gets home and he’s got an assessment to work on –

 

(six thousand words, what fresh hell is this, he’s an _artist,_ not a _writer,_ why does he have to _write_ anything when he is an _Art Major,_ there is a reason he pursued _drawing pictures_ as a career option instead of _journalism_ )

 

– which might or might not be due first thing tomorrow and that he might or might not have started even yet, so that sees him through until after one am, and it’s only thanks to Joly that he eats at all (the med student elbows his way into Grantaire’s room at about nine pm to shove a plate of food at him, and threatens to steal his laptop if Grantaire doesn’t eat every morsel) so by the time he’s got the assessment printed out and stored in a neat document folder and tucked into his satchel in readiness for tomorrow’s class, Grantaire is about ready to pass out for six years or so.

 

He can’t, of course – his class starts at eight thirty, which is an _asshole time to schedule a class,_ so he sets his alarm for the asscrack of dawn, curls up under his blankets, and goes gratefully to sleep.

 

He wakes up before his alarm. He wakes up _well_ before his alarm.

 

He wakes, in fact, at _three-thirty_ in the morning, and he knows without even having to think about it that he won’t be falling asleep again any time soon, because his blood is _singing_ with adrenaline, because he’s had another dream.

 

It had been a – riot, this time. Riot? No. Rally. Or – a rally that devolved into a riot, he thinks.

 

The golden man had been there, standing on a raised platform in front of a grey building as he spoke to the mass of people gathered in front of him, and Grantaire hadn’t been able – again – to hear what it was that he was saying, but whatever it was it was something that the crowd was fully on board with, if their shouts of agreement and the way they kept surging forwards enthusiastically was anything to go by.

 

And then, of course, the police had arrived, and everyone had scattered, and Grantaire’s heart had been in his throat because the people were running _everywhere,_ stampeding, and the golden man was shoved, and someone was trying to wrestle him down off the platform as he shouted some last minute words, and then he was pulled down off the platform and vanished into the crowd and was he ok, where did he go, who pulled him down was it a friend or a foe, the crowd was a wild surging beast and the golden man was lost somewhere in it, was he being trampled, _was he ok,_ fuck, dodge the police, where did he go, where was he, _fuck,_ policeman –

 

And then Grantaire had caught a glimpse of the golden man, dodging lithely through the crowd and evading the uniformed policemen – guards? – as though he had years of practice doing it (and Grantaire isn’t surprised by that, actually), and Grantaire was grateful for that brief glimpse, at least, because it was immediately after that that he’d woken up.

 

He wakes up and his heart is pounding and there’s adrenaline coursing through his veins, and he could either lie here and stare at the ceiling for several hours, or he could get up and paint and calm down that way.

 

He gets up, reaching for his painting smock before he’s even fully out of bed.

 

The picture takes longer than he thought it would, and by the time he’s done –

 

(the golden man standing on his improvised stage, resplendent in the afternoon light with his gold vest and red jacket, the red-white-and-blue rosette standing out brightly against the fabric, the heads of dozens of people turned to him, attentive, focussed, as he speaks to them all in a voice that carries to the very back of the crowd – Grantaire knows it does, even if he himself can’t hear the man’s voice)

 

– it’s six am and nearly time for his alarm to go off, and he could go and sleep for half an hour, he supposes, but he knows himself well enough that he knows if he goes to sleep now, he won’t be waking up for several hours at least, so really, it would be better for him to just down a couple of coffees, have a shower, set off early, and then buy more coffee just before he goes into class.

 

His classes at lunch time today, he reminds himself. He can do this. Two and a half hours’ sleep is plenty; he’s seen days through on less than that.

 

(And he has, though admittedly, he’s never seen a day through on two-and-a-half hours sleep that’s followed two nights of next to no sleep, and he thinks he’s maybe gotten like eight hours over the last three days all up, so, ok, this will be a first, but it’s fine. He’s fine.)

 

\---------------

 

Grantaire gets home just after lunch, assessment handed in and done with classes for the day (and if he has more partial sketches of the golden man through his notebook than he does actual _notes,_ what of it, he was trying to stay awake, it gave him something to focus on), and what he _should_ do is go and work on the assessment that’s due in a few weeks, but no one else is home and the apartment is quiet, and he’s had three nights in a row of next to no sleep, so what he does instead is drop his bag and notebook on the floor, and flop facedown on the couch to clock out instantly.

 

He dreams again.

 

He dreams of a raucous city street, cobblestones scattered all over with dirty puddles that splash every time someone runs through them – there are men running everywhere, women scattering out of the way, one or two dirt-coated children getting underfoot.

 

Again, though, Grantaire only notices any of this in his peripheral, because the golden man is here again.

 

The golden man is here in all his resplendent glory – blond hair shining even though it’s wet with rain, gold buttons glinting in the sinking sun and his white shirt somehow impervious to all the dirt that coats nearly everyone else here. There’s a long-barrelled musket in his hands, and he is glorious as he shouts orders and directs all those running around him.

 

The men all have pistols tucked into their belts, Grantaire realises distantly, or muskets strapped across their shoulders, and they’re all running around with a frenzied energy as they work together to --- do… something, Grantaire actually has no idea what, to be honest. They’re all as busy and rushed as bees in a kicked hive, but Grantaire has no idea what it is they’re trying to achieve, because all his attention is focused on the golden man.

 

The golden man who stops yelling directions long enough to spot Grantaire, eyes lighting on him where he stands and flaring with – something. Grantaire’s breath catches in his throat as the man makes his way over, moving through the rushing people as easily as Moses through the parted seas, and Grantaire stares, frozen, as the golden man gets closer and closer, an intent look on his face that doesn’t shift as the metres separating them become fewer and fewer.

 

Grantaire stares with wide eyes and lungs paralysed into utter stillness as the golden man gets closer and closer, and then he’s within reaching distance – is reaching out a red-clad arm to Grantaire, and his lips are opening to say something, and –

 

– and Feuilly slaps Grantaire’s legs off the couch to make room for himself, and Grantaire comes awake with a gasp and a flail, and he flails himself right off the couch and onto the floor.

 

Feuilly and Bahorel roar with laughter, and Bousset snorts inelegantly in the background while Joly rolls his eyes in equal parts fondness and exasperation, but Grantaire’s barely aware of any of that as he tries to work out what the hell just happened.

 

He’s completely disoriented and more than a little out of it still. Why is he on the floor? He was in a dirty street not a moment ago, how is he on the floor of his living room now? Dream. He was dreaming. Was he dreaming? He must have been. And now he’s not. Is he not?

 

When did Feuilly and Bahorel get here? For that matter, when did Joly and Bousset get here? Did they wake him up? _Why did they wake him up?_

 

“Oh, god, you look like a stunned fish,” Bahorel laughs, spotting Grantaire’s expression and falling into another peal of laughter, even as he extends his hand to help Grantaire up.

 

Grantaire stares at the hand, blinking dazedly. He feels like he should be lying on cobblestones, and the fact that he can feel a fuzzy rug underneath him instead is screwing with his brain. Is he not still in a dirty street filled with rushing men? He should be lying in a puddle right now. Where did the golden man go?

 

“He was about to say something,” he says, mumbling, and Bahorel blinks down at him.

 

“What?” he asks, still chortling.

 

“I wish I’d gotten that on camera,” Feuilly says from his spot on the couch, trying and failing to reign in his giggles.

 

“He was about to say something,” Grantaire repeats, still sprawled on the floor and blinking, half caught in the dream still. It was raining in the dream. He can still feel the dampness against his skin where the rain seeped through the fabric, but when he looks down at himself, his clothes are dry. He reaches one hand up to pat confusedly at them, and the sensation of dry fabric against his palm where his brain says it should feel wet only serves to add another layer of confusion to everything.

 

“He was,” he says, looking back up and casting his gaze around the room, as though the golden man will be lingering somewhere, just waiting to be noticed. “He had his musket, and he came over, and he reached for me and was about to say, he was about to – why did you wake me?”

 

That last is directed at Feuilly, and it sounds as confused and plaintive as Grantaire feels, and Grantaire can’t even bring himself to feel embarrassed about it. Feuilly and Bahorel are smiling bemused smiles now, still chuckling every now and then, but Joly and Bousset are silent – no longer laughing, watching Grantaire instead with expressions of concern.

 

“R, are you drunk?” Bahorel asks with a laugh, reaching down and grabbing Grantaire by the front of his hoodie, hauling him to his feet and holding him by the shoulders once they’re up to make sure he’s steady. Grantaire wraps his hands around his friend’s forearms and tries not to stagger. He doesn’t succeed.

 

“Is that why you’re sleeping in the middle of the day?” Bahorel continues. “It’s been a while since you got wasted before lunchtime on a weekday, but it wouldn’t be the first I guess.”

 

“ ’m not drunk,” Grantaire mumbles, risking letting go of Bahorel’s forearm with one hand so he can rub it over his face as he blinks and swallows. And he’s not drunk. Hasn’t had anything at all the last few days except the couple of beers with dinner last night. “He was going to _say something_.”

 

“Did you dream about that god of yours _again?”_ Bousset asks, and Grantaire turns his still-dazed eyes on him. “Don’t think we didn’t notice the extra painting this morning. Did you get _any_ sleep last night?”

 

“He was,” he starts, trying to coalesce who whole dream into a few short words. “And there were men everywhere, and it was raining, and he was ordering – and they were like bees, and _he was going to say something.”_

 

“Ok,” Joly says, stepping forwards and reaching out one hand to place it on Grantaire’s shoulder. “I think you should sit down for a moment.”

 

“No, I have to –” Grantaire says, because he has to paint, his fingers are _itching_ , he needs to get the dream out of his head and get it onto canvas, he won’t be able to think clearly until he does.

 

“No,” Joly says, when Grantaire turns towards his easel, where last night’s painting of the golden man addressing the crowd is still propped. “No, you’re going to sit, and you’re going to have a drink of water.”

 

“I can drink water and paint,” Grantaire argues, and succeeds this time in wriggling free of Joly’s grasping hand. He only staggers a little on his way to his easel.

 

Joly sighs in defeat when Grantaire eels away, and Feuilly gets off the couch and wanders over as Grantaire carefully takes last night’s painting down from the easel and sets it next to the paintings from the first two nights.

 

“R, these are amazing,” he says, crouching down in front of them and running his eyes over the three paintings. Grantaire barely hears him, busy running his hands over his available blank canvasses and trying to choose one.

 

He plucks one out of the dwindling pile just as Joly arrives by his side with a glass of water and a poorly concealed expression of worry; Grantaire sets the canvas (square, smaller than the first night’s) onto the easel with one hand and reaches for the glass with the other. He gulps the water down in a few short mouthfuls and holds the empty glass blindly back out in Joly’s direction as he starts rustling through his paints.

 

“Do you know who he is yet?” Bousset asks as Joly takes the glass back and Grantaire devotes both hands to sifting through his paints.

 

It’s a fair enough question, Grantaire supposes. Four dreams and three paintings over the course of four days for someone his imagination conjured is unusual for Grantaire, who usually paints things that he can see and reference, not things straight from his imagination.

 

“No,” Grantaire answers absently, finding the paints he wants and straightening up with them. “But I know he’s important.” Because he might not know much – might not know the golden man’s name, or what his voice sounds like, or what he’s doing, or when he’s from, or why he’s appearing in dream after dream – but Grantaire knows with every fibre of his being that the golden man is _important_.

 

He starts squirting paints out onto his palette, then fishes through his brushes until he finds the one he wants, wets it, and gets to work. The conversation of the others fade into the background, but he’s distantly aware of Bahorel and Feuilly asking what’s going on, and Joly and Bousset giving as best answers as they can.

 

At one stage, Bahorel must pick up Grantaire’s notebook to flip through, and Grantaire hears him say, “Did you take _any_ actual notes today?”

 

And, sure Grantaire did. They’re scattered in there somewhere. Scattered here and there between page after page of sketches of the golden man – his lips twisted in a variety of expressions; eyebrows furrowed intensely over focussed eyes; hands, midway through a collection of different gestures; hair, glinting, glinting, glinting in the sunlight.

 

Grantaire hears the question, but almost as soon as it passes his ears, he forgets that it was ever asked, focussed as he is on getting the angle of the setting sun right, and he forgets to answer entirely, and after that the conversation of the others drops completely into background noise.

 

And, see – he does know that this is all slightly worrying. He’s seen the concerned looks from Joly and Bousset, and he doesn’t doubt that Feuilly and Bahorel will start throwing them his way now too. He’d be concerned as well if any of them started having recurring that not only had them waking at night, but was also affecting them through the day.

 

He _knows_ this is worrying. He knows he should be worried about himself.

 

But – it all seems so distant. He can’t quite bring himself to focus on it. The mystery of the golden man is right in front of him, begging to be answered, and everything else seems so much further away.

 

Because – and this is something he’s only just realised – the golden man is _familiar._ How, he has no idea, since he’s only seen the man in dreams, but there’s a familiarity to every dream he’s had since that first one, where he woke up yelling and in pain and searching for bullet holes that weren’t there. He can’t put his finger on what it is, exactly, but the settings, the scenes, the _man –_ they’re all so familiar to him, and he can’t stop chasing the feeling, can’t stop trying to work out _how_ it all feels familiar, _why._

 

So he paints and he filters out the discussion of the others without even meaning to, and hours or maybe minutes later, the painting is finished and the golden man is there, front and centre on a backdrop of a sundrenched, rainy, cobblestoned street, his hand outstretched and an intent expression on his face as he opens his mouth to say words Grantaire never heard.

 

Grantaire sighs and sets his brush down, staring thoughtfully at the painting.

 

“Here,” Joly says, from beside him, and when Grantaire blinks in surprise and turns to him, the med-student holds out a plate of food. “I tried giving it to you earlier, but you were pretty focussed, so I figured I’d wait til you were done.”

 

“Thanks,” Grantaire says, and his voice is a tad hoarse for not having been used for the past – however long it’s been. The living room lights are on, he realises, and it’s dark outside, so it’s been… two hours, at least. “Where’s Bahorel and Feuilly?” he asks, because Bousset is clanging around in the kitchen, but the other two are no where to be seen.

 

“They left a little while ago,” Joly says slowly. “They said goodbye – did you not hear them leave?”

 

Grantaire shakes his head and takes an absent bite of… potato. He doesn’t even know what’s on his plate. His gaze keeps straying back to the finished painting. The curiosity is killing him. What had the golden man been about to say? He wishes Feuilly could have waited just a few more moments before waking him. He would only have needed a few more seconds.

 

“R…” Joly says, drawing Grantaire’s attention back to him. “R, what’s going on?”

 

There’s real concern in his friend’s voice, and Grantaire can’t blame him. He’d be just as worried, if their roles were reversed.

 

His gaze drifts back to the painting.

 

“I don’t know,” he murmurs, and doesn’t have a better answer than that.

 

\------------

 

That night, Grantaire dreams of a room packed full of more men than it should be able to fit, brimming at the seams with activity as they all rush around, cleaning guns and melting down bullets and packing gunpowder, and the golden man stands in their centre hefting a banner of colour and saying fierce and inspiring words to them all that Grantaire still can’t hear.

 

The dream came late tonight, and when Grantaire wakes up it’s only moments before the alarm that he forgot to turn off last night starts blaring, but he can’t be annoyed about being awake so early when his fingers are twitching for his brushes and his mind is full of the golden man, standing tall and proud and like a beacon, drawing men from all corners of the room to rally to his cry.

 

Joly and Bousset look pleased when he comes out that no new painting had materialised overnight – that apparently he slept through the night – but their faces crease with concern when Grantaire merely mumbles a vague greeting at them and staggers in the direction of his easel, forgoing even coffee in his haste to get a new canvas in place.

 

For all that apparently he slept almost all the way through the night, though, he doesn’t feel at all rested – fair, he supposes; three days on eight hours’ sleep isn’t going to be washed away by a single night’s rest – and tiredness drags at his limbs until he really settles into painting, and then everything else fades away. If Joly and Bousset try to talk to him, he doesn’t register it.

 

Éponine arrives when he’s about two thirds done, and he only notices her at all because she waits until he’s swirling his brush through the paint water to clean it before she taps him on the shoulder, ignoring his jump of surprise in favour of gesturing to the unfinished painting, and the four complete ones lining the wall along the floor.

 

“Who’s this, then?” she asks, tilting her head at the paintings in question.

 

“Apollo,” Grantaire murmurs, turning back to his paints, and it’s the first time he’s given the golden man a name, the first time that he’s had a name to give him, and he doesn’t know quite where that one came from, but now that he’s said it he doesn’t know why it didn’t occur to him earlier; he finds it suits the mystery man perfectly as he swirls his brush through the gold paint and adds it liberally-yet-precisely to the loose waves of shining blond hair. “The god of music and science and truth. The god of the sun.”

 

“Isn’t Apollo one of the Roman gods?” Éponine asks, confusion in her tone.

 

“Greek,” Grantaire corrects absently, focussed wholly instead on the growing image in front of him.

 

“Then why does he have a French flag?” Éponine asks, and Grantaire scowls at the painting.

 

“Because he is a patriotic, idealistic _idiot,”_ he snarls, spinning the brush around in his hand so he can swipe his finger through the dark grey paint on his palette in order to add a vicious line of shadow to the painted jacket, knowing somehow as he says the words that they’re true. They’re _true,_ and he’s _angry_ about the fact that this golden man – this Apollo – is _so fucking naïve._ How can such a golden god, a leader among men, be so _foolish?_

 

And no, Grantaire doesn’t know _what_ he’s naïve about – doesn’t know what Apollo is so hopelessly foolish about – but he _does_ know how the golden man’s story ends, and he knows, somehow, that that room with the window and the rising sun and the uniformed men with bayonets and muskets is a result of this man’s – this _god’s –_ stupid, foolhardy optimism, his misplaced faith in humanity, his idiotic dream of a better world, and it fills Grantaire with a sudden rage, that this glorious man would lead himself down a path that would end an execution in front of the rising sun.

 

“That… makes _no_ sense,” Éponine says after a moment, but Grantaire doesn’t register her words, focussed as he is on adding shadows here and there to Apollo’s jacket and trousers, now, even as he steams with anger, and eventually Éponine rolls her eyes and walks away.

 

“He’s been like this for days,” Bousset says to her in an undertone when she reaches him, low enough that even if Grantaire were listening (and he’s not; he’s not even aware that Bousset and Joly are in the room), he wouldn’t be able to hear. “Joly and I are really starting to worry.”

 

Éponine hums under her breath, eyes going back to Grantaire, who’s got bags under his eyes and a swipe of red paint through his dark hair, but whose gaze is bright and focussed with an intensity she’s not seen in him before.

 

“Could it be a good thing?” she asks, matching Bousset’s lowered voice. “I’ve never seen him look so… intent. Is this just a stroke of inspiration?”

 

“A stroke of _obsession_ , maybe,” Bousset replies, eyes on Grantaire as he paints and paints. “This is his fifth painting in four days.”

 

Éponine blinks. That’s… a lot, for Grantaire. It usually takes him a couple of days to complete a single painting. Five in four days is extremely unusual.

 

“He had a nightmare several nights ago,” Joly says, pitching his tone low to match Bousset’s. “Woke up yelling, panicked – convinced he’d been shot. It took us ages to calm him down. And he’s been like this ever since. I’ve never seen him so out of it.”

 

“He’s kept dreaming too,” Bousset continues. “Every time he’s slept, as far as I can tell, he’s had some new dream, and every time he wakes up and goes and paints that man, and you can barely get a word of sense out of him until he’s done. Feuilly and Bahorel were here yesterday and we found him sleeping on the couch when we got in. Feuilly woke him up, and he spent a few minutes mumbling nonsense, then went over and started painting and didn’t say a word for hours. He didn’t even notice when Bahorel and Feuilly left.”

 

“He at least slept through the night last night, as far as we can tell, but then started straight in on this one this morning as soon as he got up,” Joly adds. “Didn’t even have _coffee._ ”

 

That gets a pair of raised eyebrows out of Éponine. Grantaire doesn’t _function_ without coffee.

 

“What’s the plan?” she asks, looking away from Grantaire and back to the other two men, who trade a glance and shrug helplessly.

 

“We’re hoping it’ll stop on its own,” Bousset answers eventually. “But if it doesn’t…”

 

“If it doesn’t, what are our options?” Joly says, a bitter twist to his lips. “Dear doctor, my friend keeps painting pictures of a man he’s never met before and he’s acting like a space cadet. We know it’s not drugs because we’ve been keeping an eye on him, but we don’t know what it might be. Please help.”

 

“They’ll either laugh us out of the room or send him straight to psych,” Bousset adds, and Éponine grimaces.

 

“Well let’s hope it passes, then,” she says.

 

\------------

 

Later, painting finished and left where it is to dry, Grantaire’s sitting on the couch with his coffee (finally) in one hand and his sketchbook in his lap as his hand draws idly. He had no morning class, today, but he has one this afternoon, and is savouring his coffee before he has to leave. He hadn’t planned on sketching, but he’d be sitting here idle otherwise, and he’s always at his most relaxed when he’s sketching, so it’s automatic that he does.

 

He sketches Apollo – it really is the perfect name – over and over; sitting, standing, nursing a drink, preaching to the masses. Holding the French flag high. Sighting down the barrel of a musket.

 

He is beautiful.

 

He is a king rallying his troops, and Grantaire wants to swear fealty to him.

 

And then he feels a flash of dry humour, and flips to a new page – because he _knows_ the expression that would form on Apollo’s face if Grantaire ever told him that, if Grantaire made that comparison, called him a _king,_ swore loyalty and fealty to him – and his lips are curled in fond amusement as he sketches out the expression; one of shocked offense, appalled horror. He snickers when the drawing is complete, and Bousset leans over to glance at the sketch.

 

“I called him a king,” Grantaire explains, and his voice is rich with the amusement he’s still feeling, and it doesn’t matter if he only called Apollo a king in the sanctuary of his own mind, he knows that this expression of stunned affront would be the one the golden man would make if Grantaire actually said it to him aloud, so he might as well tell the tale as though it were real. It’s no less real than the dreams, really.

 

“You called your revolutionary god a king?” Bousset asks, tone carefully blank.

 

Grantaire grins down at the drawing.

 

“He really doesn’t approve of kings,” he says. “Fat, lazy, entitled pigs that they are.”

 

“I didn’t know you had such strong emotions about kings,” Bousset says neutrally.

 

“Oh, I don’t,” Grantaire grins. “I don’t have any particular feelings about kings. But he does.”

 

Bousset’s eyes are dark and fathomless with worry, and he says nothing. Grantaire chuckles to himself again and turns back to his sketchbook and his coffee. He’s got fifteen minutes before he needs to leave for his afternoon class. He’s got time for another sketch.

 

\---------------

 

Grantaire wakes less than two hours after falling asleep that night, and then spends several hours painting (Apollo, hefting an injured man and dragging him inside to safety, shouting orders over his shoulder as he goes and heedless of the trail of blood running down is face from a wound to his hairline, and it’s such a sombre painting that even after he’s finished it Grantaire doesn’t sleep for ages, despite the exhaustion dragging at his limbs), and it’s after he hears footsteps through the apartment that signal that either Joly or Bousset is up for the day, but before Grantaire’s alarm goes off that he finally falls asleep.

 

He sleeps through his alarm.

 

He wakes a couple of hours later, fresh dream sitting in the forefront of his memory, and doesn’t even think as he goes straight to his easel.

 

He’s so tired and so focussed on what he’s painting –

 

(they’re in the room again, the candlelit one filled with men, and all the men are laughing and drinking and chatting, and the golden man, Apollo, is grinning with the man next to him as they clink their bottles of wine together, and it’s the most relaxed and at ease Grantaire has seen him since this whole thing began, and the sight is _breathtaking_ )

 

– and he doesn’t even realise he’s skipped class until he finishes washing his brushes after he’s done painting and then glances at the clock in the kitchen, and startles to realise it’s after three in the afternoon, and he was supposed to be in class until four.

 

Joly and Bousset are both out – they leave earlier than he does for class most days – which is something at least, so as long as he times it well, they’ll never realise he missed the day. He knows they’re worried about him, and he doesn’t need to add this to everything. He doesn’t want to worry them. More. Doesn’t want to worry them more than he already is. And if they find out he missed class today without even realising, they’ll worry. He doesn’t want them worrying.

 

(God he’s tired.)

 

It’s with this thought in mind that Grantaire goes and has a quick shower – partly to wash two days’ worth of paint from his skin, mostly to attempt to wake up properly – and then he dresses and grabs his bag and heads out.

 

He goes to a bar, and drinks his first beer too quickly – feels it settle into his empty stomach like weirdly sloshy lead, both heavy and bubbly at the same time – so orders a toasted sandwich to go with his second, which he sips at more slowly while he sketches profile after profile of Apollo into his well-worn sketch book.

 

His head feels… fuzzy. He can’t even blame the alcohol. Lightweight is the opposite to what he is, and one and a half beers wouldn’t have him feeling like this.

 

This is 100% the sleep depravation.

 

He doesn’t even know how long this whole thing has been going on, at this point – how many days has it been since he got a full night’s sleep? – but even when he’s awake now, he half feels like he’s sleeping, still. Feels like he’s _dreaming_ still. Is he even sitting in a bar right now? He thinks he is, but at the same time, everything has this weird haziness to it that makes him question whether or not he’s actually dreaming.

 

He feels like he hasn’t properly woken up in days, and it’s _exhausting_. He’s utterly exhausted. He feels like he could sleep for a week, and still wake up tired.

 

An hour and a half later after arriving, he’s got several pages more filled with various sketches of Apollo, and it’s approaching the time he would usually be arriving home – which is fortunate, because his head is starting to dip and he fears that if he stays here much longer he’ll fall asleep on the bar. Not the first time he’s fallen asleep propped up against a bar, but it would certainly be the first time he’s done it practically sober, and that feels… less ok, somehow.

 

He heads home and makes a vague noise of greeting in Joly and Bousset’s direction when they spot him coming in, tries to say, “I think I’m just going to have a nap,” but mostly fails, if their expressions are anything to go by, and goes to fall facedown across his bed atop the covers, not even bothering to take his shoes off. He’s asleep before he even realises that his bag and sketchbook are still over his shoulder and are digging into his stomach where he’s laying on them.

 

He dreams and dreams, incoherent flashes of a thousand different things – candles on a wooden table, the flash of gunfire, a fire burning low, friends in a circle laughing happily, friends in a circle staring out defensively, stars against an inky sky and a sunrise and a sunset and empty bottles clanging together and hands flashing as they gesture and a hard-won smile and an easily-won scowl and the boom of canons and people chanting and the rush of feet and the press of an angry mob and a chandelier burning low and laughter and shouts and voices raised in friendship and voices raised in battle, and even in sleep Grantaire knows that this isn’t restful, feels like he’s been running for _days,_ knows that he’s going to wake up more tired than he was when he went to sleep.

 

It’s a long while before the scattered pieces of dreams coalesce into one that’s anything more than loud impressions of sound and colour.

 

Grantaire dreams of a barricade made of furniture, an endlessly drizzling sky, and a moon shining dully overhead.

 

Grantaire is one of ten or so men leaning against the barricade, finding seats and platforms to rest against where they can, and the atmosphere is as cheerless as the weather, and _oh_. Oh, everything’s starting to come together, now. He hadn’t known, before, what it was that was happening. Hadn’t had enough of the facts to piece together a picture, but it’s forming in front of him now – the meetings in candlelit rooms, the voices raised together, the angry mob, _the barricade._

 

The picture is drawing together, and Grantaire knows his country’s history – knows about the failed uprising in the early 1800s, knows about the _barricades_ they built _,_ knows it was mostly young men who dreamt of a better tomorrow who were involved, knows that the all _died –_ and the word _revolution_ forms in his head and sits there smouldering like coals in a fire. 

 

Apollo is standing – alert and sharp as always, even with rain-soaked hair and clothes clinging to his skin – near the top of the barricade, a red flag in one hand and a stolen musket and bayonet in the other as he peers warily through a crack in the furniture out to the street beyond. Waiting for the National Guard, Grantaire knows, because it wasn’t policemen at the mob at all, it was the _National Guard._

 

Grantaire watches Apollo for several long minutes, unblinking despite the rain, and Apollo never moves an inch, and the rain keeps falling in an endless sheet.

 

Around him, doomed boys sit against broken furniture and wait for their deaths.

 

Grantaire wakes to a hand on his shoulder, and Joly’s insistent voice.

 

“There you are, come on, wake up,” he’s saying, and beyond his voice, Grantaire can hear his alarm going off. Why is his alarm buzzing. What time is it.

 

“Bou, get that would you,” Joly says, levering Grantaire upright as Bousset leans in from wherever he’d been hiding to turn Grantaire’s alarm off. Grantaire’s jacket and satchel and shoes are off. He doesn’t remember taking them off.

 

“We took them off,” Joly says, because apparently he’s noticed Grantaire’s confused gaze. “Last night, when you came in here and passed out. You didn’t even twitch. Now come on. We’re taking you to the doctor’s.”

 

What. No. He wants – he needs to paint. He’s – he doesn’t want to lose it, he might lose the image if he waits. It was – there was – and it was raining, and Apollo had a flag, and he _knows what this is,_ now, sort of, knows it’s the uprising, the 1832 rebellion, he needs to _paint_ –

 

“Nope, no painting,” Joly says. “Doctor’s, then if you still desperately want to paint after that then we won’t stop you.”

 

“I have – class,” Grantaire protests muzzily, because that’ll work. Probably. Does he have class? He doesn’t know. What day is it? So long as it’s not a weekend, he’s got class. But Joly wouldn’t make him miss class, would he?

 

It turns out that Joly would, in fact, make Grantaire miss class, because he says, “It’s Thursday, and yes, you do have class, and even if I wasn’t already planning on making you miss them, I sure as hell would be after that little display.”

 

What little display is he talking about. Grantaire has no idea what’s going on. He should be going to class. He wants to paint. He wants _so badly_ to paint, why isn’t Joly letting him, _god,_ he’s so tired.

 

“I’m talking about the little display where you’re saying whatever you’re thinking without even realising it, what’s going on is that we’re taking you to the doctor, and I’m not letting you paint because _you need to go to a doctor.”_

 

Grantaire struggles, but he’s _exhausted_ still, and he can still feel the rain on his face and the boys sitting next to him are doomed to die and he’s so tired – he’s _so tired,_ why is he so tired, he slept _all night_ , what did he even dream about, all he can remember is the last bit, the barricade and Apollo standing guard in the rain, but he knows there was more, but it’s all a jumbled mess of sound and colour – so his struggles turn out to be in vain as Bousset and Joly together bundle him up and shepherd him out the door into a waiting cab.

 

The trip to the doctor’s is maybe a fifteen minute drive, but Grantaire falls asleep on the way there anyway, head lolling on Bousset’s shoulder –

 

(and he dreams of a room, cold and dark and lonely and Apollo’s not there, Apollo’s nowhere, Grantaire is in the room by himself with only bottles of wine for company, there’s not even any _furniture,_ and he sits himself down in a corner and takes a drink from his bottle of wine and lets his head loll against the wall and he’s _so tired_ )

 

– “Up you come, come on,” says Joly, and they’re at the doctor’s now, apparently.

 

He staggers more than once on the way in, but Joly and Bousset are on either side of him, murmuring reassurances and encouragements to him as they go along –

 

“‘m _tired,”_ followed by a “We know, R, that’s why we’re at the doctor’s,” followed by “I want to _paint,”_ which gets the response of “I know, later though, ok,” and “Can I _sleep_ ” answered with a gentle but firm, “Not yet, R, but soon, we promise.”

 

– and then he’s in the doctors listing in a seat against Joly’s side while Bousset pokes him every few seconds to make sure he stays awake.

 

There’s a TV mounted to the wall that Grantaire’s eyes fall on, and he keeps them there because it’s something to focus on, and the moving images are more soothing than the off-white walls of the doctor’s waiting room.

 

There’s a news show on, and they’re talking about some senator or politician or something who’s in the midst of some scandal and is being forced to resign thanks to his improper use of taxpayer funds.

 

“Until we cut the fat ones down to size,” Grantaire mumbles into Joly’s shoulder, humming a little, because it seems appropriate.

 

“What?” Joly asks, but then the doctor is calling his name and Joly and Bousset are helping him to his feet and guiding him along, and the moment’s gone.

 

It wouldn’t make sense anyway, if he tried to explain it.

 

Joly takes point in the doctor’s surgery, while Grantaire mostly tries not to fall asleep, and the med student explains what’s been going on the last few days and what he’s noticed or not noticed.

 

“I’ve been keeping track of his temperature, it hasn’t been abnormal,” Joly says, and when in the name of Lady Liberty has Joly taken his temperature.

 

His baffled squint must convey the question – or maybe he’s just speaking his thoughts aloud again, because Joly turns to him with a furrowed brow.

 

“I’ve taken your temperature every day since the second time you woke up all spaced out like this,” he says. “Do you not remember?”

 

Grantaire genuinely has no memory of any temperature taking. How did he miss a thermometer being stuck in his mouth.

 

“See – this is what we’re talking about,” Joly says, turning back to the doctor, while Bousset frowns worriedly. “He’s been completely out of it – for _days_. I don’t think he would have eaten anything if I hadn’t forced it into him, to be honest.”

 

When _is_ the last time Grantaire ate? He’s not sure. Oh, no, wait. The toasted sandwich at the bar yesterday, that’s right. Was that yesterday? _God_ he’s tired.

 

Bousset, Joly, and the doctor are all peering at him in concern.

 

Is he doing that thing where he says his thoughts aloud again.

 

“Yes,” Bousset answers.

 

Oh.

 

“When were you at the bar?” Joly asks, and shit. He can’t say _Yesterday when I was pretending that I’d been to class when I had not, in fact, been to class,_ because that would be totally throwing himself under the bus here. He went to the bar so he could arrive home at the usual time and not let Joly and Bousset know he’d painted all day instead of going to class, because that would worry them, to know that, and he doesn’t want to worry them.

 

They’re both staring at him with a mixture of concern, compassion, and irritation on their faces though, and Grantaire suspects he may have just spoken out loud again. He groans and tips sideways so he can mash his face into Bousset’s shoulder. He just wants to _sleep,_ he hates that his thoughts keep leaking out of his mouth without his permission. Is he even awake right now? It doesn’t feel like it. Everything’s hazy. The only reason he suspects this isn’t all a dream right now is because it doesn’t have Apollo in it.

 

“How much did you have to drink at the bar?” the doctor asks.

 

“Two b’rs,” Grantaire says into Bousset’s shoulder, when Bousset pokes him and repeats the question. “An’ m’head felt fuzzy, so I ate.”

 

“He’d usually drink three before even hitting tipsy,” Joly says, in answer to a question Grantaire must have missed. “He’ll often have a couple with dinner; two isn’t a lot for him at all. This isn’t a hangover. And it’s been going on for days, anyway.”

 

More questions are asked and answered, but Grantaire fades out to them all, dozing on Bousset’s shoulder instead, mind drifting hazily across his dream from last night. He has to paint that, still.

 

Finally, the doctor makes him open his mouth and runs a cotton ball around the insides of his cheeks and along his tongue, and then she’s done with them, and she hands Joly a prescription for sleeping pills which he pockets as he helps Bousset heft Grantaire up again, thanking her as they leave and saying something about looking forward to the results of the swab test.

 

Grantaire falls asleep in the taxi again on the way home, and he dreams of waking up in a dark room alone, the sounds of shouts and screams and gunfire and thudding footfalls echoing through the space and rattling around in his brain. There’s a final burst of gunfire and a series of closely timed thuds, and then silence, and Grantaire is struggling to his feet and pressing a hand to his head in an attempt to combat his hangover even as he staggers unsteadily to the door and out into the hallway.

 

Footfalls rush by, heavy on the wooden stairs that lie at the end of the hall leading up to the floor above, and Grantaire follows the sound.

 

He’s shaken awake before he reaches the top of the stairs.

 

His friends bustle him inside, and initially they’re heading towards his bedroom, but no – no, Grantaire needs to _paint,_ he – Apollo on the barricade is fading, it’s becoming blurry in his mind, and he needs to get it onto canvas before it vanishes completely – so he lurches unsteadily out of their grasp and makes for his easel.

 

“Grantaire, you need to _sleep,”_ Joly says, and he sounds so concerned, and Grantaire is sorry for that, he is, but he _needs to paint._

 

He says as much – slurs as much – and then grabs the first canvas he can and lays it on the floor. He’s painted on the floor before, but he does usually prefer an easel. The concept of standing and painting right now, though, is one that’s a bit beyond him, so he lays the canvas out on the dropsheet that hasn’t been picked up in days, kneels unsteadily beside it, and he reaches for his paints.

 

Joly and Bousset must have some kind of silent conversation over his head, because next second, Joly’s kneeling next to him with his hand on his shoulder and a stern expression on his face.

 

“I’m going to go and fill your prescription,” he says, “and when I get back you’re going to take the sleeping pills and you’re going to _sleep,_ and I don’t care if your painting is done or not by the time I get back, ok?”

 

Grantaire nods vaguely, uncapping paints and splashing colours messily out onto his palette – greys and browns and silvers and blacks and, of course, the requisite red and gold – before he starts smearing his fingers through them, not even bothering with paintbrushes.

 

Joly watches him for a moment, then stands and – with a final “Keep an eye on him” to Bousset, who replies with a snort and an “Obviously” – heads out the door.

 

Grantaire keeps his head down, working fast – working against both his own exhaustion and the deadline set by Joly – and beneath his fingers, the barricade takes shape. It’s less detailed than any of the other’s he’s done so far, more of an impression of a barricade, with faceless men scattered here and there over the upturned, broken furniture. It’s all tones of brown with grey flagstones and an inky sky and silver rain and murky puddles, and the only spot of light is Apollo, standing tall and proud, facing away – looking out beyond the barricade – with his red jacket and his red flag and his golden hair glinting quietly in the moonlight.

 

It’s a slap-dash effort at best, and it won’t be going into any museums, but it gets the scene out of his head and onto canvas, and that’s all he really wanted, so it’s fine.

 

Plus, it’s obviously clear enough what it is, despite the rushed job, because Bousset takes one look at the completed painting and blinks.

 

“Is that – is that a barricade?” he says, eyes surprised.

 

“Mmm,” Grantaire says, shifting just enough that he can lean against the wall, eyes falling shut. “Apollo’s keeping watch,” he says, and then Joly arrives home.

 

There’s a brief debate over his head about whether or not he should take the sleeping pills when he’s so clearly right next door to passing out anyway, but then the debate lasts long enough that Grantaire remembers the empty room with the empty wine bottles, and he cracks open his eyes to peer thoughtfully at his remaining canvas (there’s only one left, that’s going to become a problem soon, if this dreams situation keeps up at the pace it has been) as he holds his own debate with himself as to whether or not he should bother painting that one, or if he’s happy to leave it. It doesn’t have Apollo in it, after all.

 

Bousset must notice something in his expression, because he says, “Nope – no. No more. No more painting. I can see you thinking it, and you’re done for today,” and Joly must agree because then they’re shaking the required dose into Grantaire’s palm and pressing a glass of water into his hand, and then they’re helping him to his feet and shepherding him into his room.

 

He’s out cold before his head hits the pillow.

 

For a long time, his sleep is dreamless, and he floats weightless in nothing and enjoys the sensation of rest, until finally, the nothing starts to shift and change around him, and then he’s standing in a press of bodies in the street, and Apollo is standing on top of an opulent horse-drawn carriage, a pistol in one hand and a red flag in the other, and the carriage is surrounded by people in various states of cleanliness, and everyone is frozen – waiting – and when Grantaire turns to see what everyone is staring at he sees a line of National Guardsmen, all in their neat and clean uniforms, some of them with pistols and others with muskets, some on horseback and some on foot, and Grantaire knows when this is.

 

He knows when this is, this is the funeral procession for General Lemarque, and it was here that –

 

a musket is fired, a woman in the front of the crowd goes down, chaos erupts

 

– it was here that the revolution started.

 

Grantaire comes awake with a breath and a series of rapid blinks.

 

It takes him a few moments to register that he doesn’t – he doesn’t feel as bone-numbingly tired as he did before.

 

He still feels right next door to exhausted, yes, but he’s actually fully aware of the fact that he’s awake this time, which is more than can be said for the last… couple of days.

 

He’s tired, yes, but he’s awake and he knows it, instead of being caught in this haze of exhaustion that clouds everything with a confusing dreamlike quality that makes him question whether or not he’s actually asleep, so that’s, you know. Progress.

 

He rolls out of bed and staggers only three times as he makes a beeline for the kitchen, because _coffee,_ and it’s only once he’s sloppily poured himself a mug that he realises the presence of anyone else.

 

Joly and Bousset are here, which isn’t surprising, but Éponine, Bahorel and Feuilly are also here, standing clumped around his various canvases and watching him silently.

 

“Mmrgh,” he says, which is pre-coffee speak for “Morning.”

 

Joly eyes him warily.

 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, running his eyes over every inch of Grantaire as though he can determine his health just by the look of him.

 

Grantaire makes a sound that he hopes conveys “Still really fucking tired, but actually conscious this time.”

 

“You’re actually standing on your own today, and whatever else is the case, that’s an improvement over yesterday,” Bousset says, and Grantaire makes an affirmative noise into his coffee, draining it and then refilling it instantly.

 

“I gotta paint,” he says, because he does, and he levers himself away from the kitchen counter and holds on to his coffee as though it will help him stay upright in the journey between here and his painting corner.

 

He doesn’t miss the dismayed expressions that flit across all five of his friend’s faces.

 

“R,” Éponine says, moving forwards, and Grantaire blinks at her, because concern is not a tone her voice usually takes on, and yet. “Talk to us. _Please._ We’re worried about you.”

 

“It’s ok,” he says, still moving unerringly towards his easel. “It’s nearly over.” He doesn’t know how he knows that, now that he’s said it, but at the same time he knows it’s the truth. Whatever this is – it may not have been moving in a linear fashion, but he can sense it’s coming to an end. The dreams are feeling – louder, somehow, now that he thinks about it. Like they’re the final crescendo in a song. Like they’re building to something. This one of the funeral procession was the loudest yet. 

 

“ _What’s_ nearly over?” Éponine asks, sounding confused and concerned. “I thought Joly was exaggerating, when he said how you’ve been, but he wasn’t, especially if this is you _improved_ over yesterday. You’ve been doing nothing but sleeping and painting for _days,_ and Bou said any time you _do_ speak you’re muttering _nonsense,_ and Feuilly and Bahorel told me about the other day, when they woke you --- we’re _worried_ about you, R. Can’t you see that?”

 

Grantaire pauses from where he’s lifting the last canvas onto the easel to step over and kiss Éponine’s cheek, which makes her startle and blink wide, surprised eyes at him.

 

“I can see,” he assures. “I know, and I’m sorry. But I’m nearly done.”

 

His previous paintings are lined up against the wall –

 

(Apollo, staring out from the canvas with blood down the side of his face and an expression of shocked wonder in his eyes and parted lips; the candlelit room with Apollo addressing all the young men who will eventually raise the barricades with him; Apollo on a makeshift stage, addressing a crowd that will shortly scatter into the wind before the National Guard; Apollo in the street, rain-soaked and reaching out, unspoken words sitting perched on the ledge of his lips; Apollo, standing on a stool in a candle-lit room full of activity and holding the French flag high in the air; Apollo, dragging a man with a gunshot wound to safety; Apollo, clinking his bottle of wine against that of the young man next to him, a grin on his face and his shoulders relaxed for once; Apollo, standing guard on the barricade, musket at the ready and red flag flying high and proud)

 

– and they’re all out of order, the paintings, they’re still lying in the order he painted them in, but that’s not the order they _happened_ in, and he’ll have to fix that, but that can wait until later. That can wait until after he’s done them all.

 

“I’ve just got two more,” he tells Éponine – tells her and Joly and Bousset and Feuilly and Bahorel, who are all staring at him with emotions that differ from person to person but that all have _extreme concern_ in common – and again, he doesn’t know how he knows this, that he’s only got two left, but it it’s true. This one, and – and one more. One he hasn’t seen yet. One he doesn’t _know_ yet.

 

He smiles at Éponine reassuringly (she doesn’t look reassured) and starts squirting out his paints onto his palette.

 

\---------------

 

He genuinely has no idea how long it takes him to paint this one, same as he’s got no idea how long it took him to paint any of the others, but when it’s done he packs up his paints and washes his brushes and hasn’t even paused to take a proper look at the painting before he remembers, suddenly, that that was his last canvas. He doesn’t have any more.

 

He’s got one more painting to paint, and he doesn’t have any canvasses, and that’s not a problem right now, but it’s going to become a problem as soon as he wakes up next and he has the painting in his head and no canvas to get it out onto.

 

Right then.

 

“Uh, no – _where_ are you going?” Feuilly asks, as Grantaire suddenly spins on his heel and makes for his bedroom. “You’re supposed to eat – Joly said you’re supposed to eat as soon as you’re done painting, not go back to bed.”

 

There are general noises behind Grantaire – thuds and footfalls and scrabbling – as he strides into his bedroom and goes hunting for his bag.

 

“Not going to bed,” he calls over his shoulder, and then finds his bag. He checks inside to make sure his wallet’s in there – it is – and then he turns to stride out of his room again, only to find his doorway blocked.

 

“Where exactly do you think you’re going?” Bahorel asks, and he’s standing in Grantaire’s doorway with Feuilly and Éponine and Joly and Bousset, and Grantaire honestly did not realise that they were all still here. Have they all been waiting around for him to finish his painting?

 

“Have you all been waiting around for me to finish my painting?” he asks.

 

“Yes,” at least three people answer, and then Joly’s pushing through the small crowd of them to make his way properly into Grantaire’s room.

 

“What is it you think you’re about to do, Grantaire?” he asks, reasonable and calm.

 

“I’m out of canvasses,” Grantaire answers, hitching his bag over his shoulder and then startling as he catches a glimpse of his outfit. Pyjama pants and a dirty green hoodie do not an outdoor-appropriate outfit make. A _paint-stained_ green hoodie, Grantaire realises, and squawks down at it in horror.

 

“Why did you let me paint without my smock?” he demands, yanking the hoodie off so he can inspect the damage properly.

 

“We didn’t want to let you paint at _all,_ but you were hardly open to intervention of any kind,” Feuilly says, but Grantaire barely hears him.

 

“This is my _favourite hoodie,”_ he moans, and scratches at damp paint as though that will help, then spins and heads to his doorway. “Move, I need – this can’t dry, get out – ”

 

He elbows his way out of his room past everyone and marches down the hall to the bathroom, where he puts the plug in the bathtub and turns on the cold tap, dumping his hoodie in immediately and watching as it gets slowly doused in water.

 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Joly says from behind him, and Grantaire spins to find that the doorway behind him has filled up with people again. He blinks at all of them.

 

“Are you just going to follow me around from room to room from now on?” he asks, bemused, and Bahorel, Feuilly and Bousset nod seriously. Éponine and Joly glare. Grantaire is…. not going to deal with this right now.

 

“I need to go and buy more canvasses,” he explains instead, realising he still hasn’t answered Joly’s question. “I have one more to paint, I need a canvas to paint it on.”

 

“You’re not going anywhere just yet,” Joly says sternly, as Grantaire turns off the tap and swishes his hoodie around in the water for a moment. “You’re going to eat something, and then you’re going to go back to sleep, because you’ve got bags under your eyes the size of golfballs, and you’re leaning on all the walls for support as you walk, so you’re clearly not better yet.”

 

Grantaire’s shaking his head.

  
“No – no, Joly, I can’t sleep yet – I can’t sleep until I have more canvasses.”

 

“Why not?” Bousset asks, sounding stern.

 

“Because I only have one more, and if I go to sleep I’ll see it and then I’ll have to paint it but I won’t have anything to paint it _on to_ ,” Grantaire explains, a little desperate. There are five of them. He can’t force his way past five of them – while in pyjamas and a stained t-shirt, no less – to get out of the apartment and down to the art supply store next to the university to buy more canvasses. They’ll stop him, and they’ll stop him easily. They need to let him go, or he’s not going anywhere.

 

“It’s _one more,_ I have _one more_ to do, and then it’ll be done – I’ll be finished, and I’ll sleep for a _month,_ I promise, I will sleep for days on end, and it won’t be interrupted sleep, it’ll be real, proper sleep with regular dreams instead of whatever the fuck these are, and I’ll be done, and I’ll be back to my normal pain-in-the-ass self, I swear. One more.”

 

“ _Back to_ his normal pain-in-the-ass self, he says,” Bahorel mutters. “Like he’s not being a pain in the ass _right now.”_

 

“What if I tell you you’re not allowed to go out until you’ve had more sleep?” Joly asks, narrowing his eyes threateningly at Grantaire.

 

“Then I’ll paint on the walls when I wake up instead,” Grantaire says, and he means it, he’ll do it. He’s going to _need_ to paint when he gets up, and if he doesn’t have a canvas to paint on, then he damn well _will_ paint on the walls of their tiny little apartment, and damn their bond money. He could send one of the others to purchase the canvasses for him, he supposes, but there are so many options – so many sizes and brands and thicknesses and textures, and they wouldn’t manage to get the right sort, he knows it.

 

Something must show in his face that it’s not a threat – that he really will paint the walls if he has to, and damn their security deposit – and Joly relents with a cut off sigh.

 

“Fine,” he says, and there’s an immediate outcry from the peanut gallery in the doorway. Joly holds up a hand to stem the protests. “Three conditions,” he says, holding up three fingers and dropping one with each new condition that he states. “Firstly, I come with you. You’re not going anywhere by yourself in this state, you’ll walk yourself onto train tracks and not even notice until St Peter is showing you through the Pearly Gates. Second, you get changed. You’re not going out in public like that. Finally, you eat something on the way. I’m going to make you a sandwich, and you’re going to eat it, and you’re not going to say a word of complaint. Agreed?”

 

“Agreed,” Grantaire nods, and makes for the bathroom door.

 

A short while later, Grantaire is changed and making his way unerringly to the front door, and everyone – everyone, not just Joly – joins him there as he makes to depart.

 

“Uh?” he says eloquently once he’s out on the landing, as Joly presses a hastily-made sandwich into his hand, Feuilly and Bousset jostle each other on their way through the door, and Bahorel genially gestures for Éponine to proceed him before he pulls the door shut behind them all.

 

“You think we’re letting you go by yourself?” Éponine asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

 

“You really don’t have to – ” he starts to say, and Bahorel rolls his eyes and wraps an arm around Grantaire’s shoulders to propel him down the hallway. “We’re worried about you, and we’re not letting you out of our sight until we’re no longer feeling worried about you. Just accept it. It’ll all go more smoothly for you.”

 

Grantaire blinks at them all, and Bousset takes the opportunity to take Grantaire’s sandwich-filled hand and guide it pointedly up to the artists lips, and Grantaire sighs and gives in – to the sandwich and the accompaniment both.

 

The six of them make their way out of the apartment building, and head towards the train station that will take them to the university they all attend.

 

The trip to their Uni is only twenty-five minutes long on a good day, and while the art shop located just outside the campus gates isn’t the most convenient to get to – there are a couple that are closer to Grantaire’s apartment – this one has both a very wide range of products in order to cater to all the art students who attend the university, and a discount for anyone with a student card, so it’s the one Grantaire chooses to go to almost all the time, even if it means he has to cart his bulky purchases back on a crowded train.

 

The six of them pile onto the train, which at this time of day isn’t terribly packed, and Grantaire manages to find himself a window seat, Bahorel, Joly, and Éponine sitting around him, and Bousset and Feuilly sitting across the aisle.

 

Thanks to Bousset’s prompt, Grantaire has by now long since finished the sandwich Joly had pressed on him back at the apartment, so with nothing to occupy his hands or mind, Grantaire’s thoughts spill naturally back towards the dreams as he sits and watches out the train window.

 

“Hey, so I’ve been wanting to ask,” Feuilly says a few minutes later, not willing to leave Grantaire to his thoughts, apparently. “This Apollo of yours. Where did he come from?”

 

Grantaire frowns a little.

 

“Southern France,” he answers, and doesn’t even question how he knows that.

 

“No,” Feuilly clarifies. “I mean – well, the inspiration for the guy in your paintings must have come from somewhere. He can’t be entirely a product of your imagination – you’ve always drawn what you see, not what you imagine. So you must have seen someone somewhere who inspired him.”

 

Grantaire frowns again.

 

“I’ve never seen him outside of the dreams, or anyone even remotely like him,” he answers, and his eyes drift back to the window, gaze distant. “If I had, I would have dropped everything and followed him to the ends of the earth in an instant.” His voice drops down to a murmur, practically talking to himself. “I’d follow him to death, and beyond.”

 

“See, that?” Bahorel says a few moments later into the silence. “ _That’s_ why we’re so worried about you. That right there, what you just said? That is the opposite of reassuring, R.”

 

Grantaire makes an absent humming noise, not really paying much attention any more, and no one tries to make conversation after that (electing instead to watch him with various degrees of concern, probably, but Grantaire doesn’t notice either way), and it’s not long before they’re at the stop closest to the university.

 

The walk to the art store doesn’t take long from the station, and the woman in the shop greets Grantaire with warm familiarity, then leaves him to it.

 

He doesn’t take very long – his adrenaline from finishing the funeral procession painting and realising he was out of canvasses has definitely started to wane, and he really is starting to want either a nap or a bucket full of coffee now – so he selects four canvasses of differing sizes, pays for them, and makes his way to the doorway, the other five trailing behind him.

 

He doesn’t look before he steps out, which really is his fault – but he’s almost asleep on his feet, so while it’s definitely his fault, he feels he probably can’t be _blamed_ for the fact that he doesn’t notice the pedestrian who’s rapidly approaching along the street just as Grantaire pulls the door open and exits.

 

 _“Watch ou– ”_ Éponine starts to yelp from behind him, but it’s too late, and Grantaire crashes bodily into the person who’d been walking past the door just as Grantaire strode out.

 

He and the other person grasp at each other instinctively – half to steady themselves, and half to steady the other – and Grantaire’s canvasses go flying along with his crash victim’s books, all of them landing in a scattered mess on the footpath.

 

“Shit, fuck, I’m so sorr– ” Grantaire says as soon as he’s done trying not to fall over, and then his words just… halt on the tip of his tongue and his jaw drops open and his eyes go wide, because – because it’s Apollo. The person Grantaire just ran into, it’s Apollo. Grantaire just crashed into Apollo. Holy fuck. Grantaire blinks and stares.

 

For his part, Apollo is staring right back at Grantaire with an expression that matches the artist’s own – slack jawed, and eyes huge with shock and recognition.

 

Both their hands spasm reflexively where they’re both holding each-other – Grantaire gripping Apollo with one hand around his forearm and one around his bicep, one of Apollo’s hands wrapped around Grantaire’s wrist and the other around his elbow – and they stare at each other in a silence that lasts both half a second and half an eternity.

 

Apollo looks wan and tired, up close (and _in person, fuck –_ Grantaire… isn’t certain he’s not hallucinating this, actually), with bags under his eyes and his usually glossy hair hanging in limp waves about his too-pale face, and lines around his lips and between his brows that speak of his exhaustion.

 

He is _beautiful_.

 

Grantaire is staring. He _knows_ he’s staring, knows he’s slack-jawed and wide-eyed and everything, but he can’t help it. Days, _days_ of dreaming about a man he’s never met before, and now suddenly the man is in front of him, and he is – impossibly – even more beautiful than the dreams made him out to be, even when pale and drawn and visibly exhausted.

 

“You,” Apollo starts, and oh, _oh,_ his _voice._ His voice is deep and rich and mellow and just the tiniest bit husky (though that might be the shock) and Grantaire wants to hear him speak forever for the rest of his days.

 

“I… I know you,” Apollo says, halting, and his hand slides from Grantaire’s wrist down to his hand, and their fingers tangle together of their own accord, without conscious input from either of them, palm pressed together and fingers linked. It feels like coming home.

 

“Yeah,” Grantaire agrees, laughing breathlessly, wondrously. “You do.”

 

Because he does, he _does._ He knows Apollo and Apollo knows him, and Grantaire has no idea how any of this is working or _how_ it’s happening, but he is as suddenly sure of this as he was about everything else that he knows about this man – that he hates Kings and that he’s stupidly patriotic and foolishly idealistic and a fucking _fatal optimist_ and that he hates ale but will drink it if his friends are and that he died in a room backlit by the morning sun with his hand warm in Grantaire’s.

 

Grantaire knows Apollo, and Apollo knows Grantaire, and they died together, once.

 

He can’t tear his gaze away from the other man’s eyes. They’re shockingly blue. Grantaire’s dreams haven’t managed to convey their exact colour, somehow. They’re shockingly, startlingly blue with golden flecks through them, and Grantaire could look into those eyes for years without blinking and never ever tire of it.

 

“I’ve been dreaming of your face for _days_ ,” the other man goes on, sounding astounded and confused and baffled and elated, and Grantaire understands, because he’s feeling all those things too.

 

“My apartment is full of paintings of yours,” he says, fingers flexing against the blond man’s, and he feels the pressure returned. “You’re all I’ve been able to sketch for days.”

 

It should be creepy. It should be monumentally creepy. It should sound weird and strange and obsessive and worrying. They’ve never met each other, after all. Never even set eyes on each other –outside of dreams, apparently.

 

But the words fall from his mouth of their own accord, and instead of withdrawing, a myriad of emotions flash across the other man’s face, and Grantaire senses that he feels the same relief that Grantaire himself does, that he’s not alone in – whatever this is. That he’s not the only one who’s been seeing the face of a man he’s never met in his dreams, over and over and over again. That he’s not the only one who’s been dreaming of ~~remembering~~ a revolution that was planned in the backroom of an old but beloved café --- a revolution that _failed._

 

There are four people on the footpath behind Apollo – his friends, Grantaire assumes – and they’re staring and watching the interaction with the same bafflement and surprise that Grantaire knows without looking that his own friends are behind him, and a couple of people from both sets of friends are asking questions with varying levels of confusion and concern, but it’s like Grantaire and Apollo are in a bubble, and everything outside of them is hazy and indistinct; distant. Unimportant.

 

He’s sure this is very confusing for their friends. Hell – it’s very confusing for _him_ , and he’s the one this is happening to.

 

“What’s _happening?”_ Apollo murmurs, eyes still fixed on Grantaire’s (who couldn’t look away from Apollo’s gaze if someone lit him on fire) and not loosening his grip in the slightest. And – Grantaire would really like to know the answer to that question too, actually.

 

He opens his mouth to say something like that – a cheerfully baffled _I don’t know_ or a completely frank _No fucking clue_ or any variant thereof _–_ but something else comes out instead.

 

“Vive la République,” Grantaire says in a murmur, without quite meaning to –

 

(and he gets a sudden mental image of the room full of faceless men in National Guard uniforms standing between him and a golden god – a golden god with his head hanging low in defeat, who looks up at Grantaire’s words with an expression of surprised wonder)

 

– and he doesn’t know where the words came from, has no idea what caused them to fall from his lips, but now that he’s said them he finds that they fit quite well in his mouth.

 

The blond man makes a choked sound in response and the fingers tangled with Grantaire’s tighten reflexively as his other unwraps itself from Grantaire’s elbow and instead comes up to the artist’s collar to grip at it tightly, and Apollo stares with lips parted in surprise and eyes wide with wonder, and he looks just like he did in the very first dream, and Grantaire experiences a weird moment of double vision as the University grounds behind Apollo blank out for a moment and are replaced with a wooden-slatted room, lit by the light of the morning sun through one lonely window.

 

“What did you say?” Apollo asks, hoarse, and Grantaire can’t look away from his eyes.

 

“Will you permit it?” he asks in a murmur, not bothering to repeat himself, and his eyes drop to the blond’s lips as his free hand comes up of its own accord to brush along the sculpted edge of Apollo’s jaw, and again, the words are coming from somewhere else, some _when_ else –

 

(a window to their backs, uniformed men in front of them with muskets raised, a hand outstretched, a _smile_ …)

 

– and the blond man’s eyes flare wider for an instant, a flurry of emotions flitting through them as he sucks in a breath, and then he surges forward and the hand on Grantaire’s collar slides up to wrap firmly around the back of his neck instead, and Apollo’s lips press bruisingly to Grantaire’s.

 

Distantly, Grantaire is aware of their respective friends gasping or exclaiming with shock, but most of his attention is on the feel of stubble under one hand, the warm tangle of fingers in the other, the fierce press of slightly chapped lips against his own, the slide of Apollo’s fingers through the hair at the back of his head.

 

Grantaire meets the pressure with an even amount of his own, pressing up into Apollo as his hand slides from the other man’s jaw into his hair – into that mane of blond almost-curls that, even limp and poorly kempt, still shine in the sun like liquid gold.

 

It feels like – _god,_ but it feels like so many things, Grantaire can’t even begin to describe it. It feels like a warm drink after a day spent in the cold; it feels like the sun making its first reappearance after a long, dark winter, it feels like explosions; it feels like a soft bed and warm blankets after a long day’s work; it feels like a festival.

 

It feels like coming home.

 

It feels like _finally._

 

It’s moments or minutes or millennia later that they break apart, breath shaky as they press their foreheads together, air mingling between their parted lips as they blink their eyes open and stare at each other again, fingers tangled in the other’s hair as they take in the other with an air of wonder and disbelief.

 

Their hands are still joined.

 

“Of course you’re in a red jacket,” Grantaire murmurs abruptly with a laugh, noticing for the first time the garment that Apollo (and Grantaire really does have to get his actual name) is wearing, all red leather and brightly shining golden zips.

 

Apollo glances at Grantaire’s own jacket, and something that might be a pout flickers across his face.

 

“You’re not wearing green,” he says, and Grantaire figures that green must have been his colour scheme of choice in the dreams, in the same way that he will forever, _forever,_ associate red and gold with his Apollo.

 

“I got paint on my favourite hoodie,” Grantaire explains, thinking of the garment in question that’s currently steeping in a bathtub of water as he draws his hand out of Apollo’s hair enough that he can wrap a strand around his index finger and tug lightly.

 

“Excuse me for interrupting, but could someone tell me what the _hell_ is going on here?”

 

Grantaire and Apollo jump violently.

 

“Courferac,” Apollo responds after a moment, turning enough that he can see his friends behind him, his hand is still tight in Grantaire’s own, and hi voice is flush with excitement. “Combeferre, Jehan, Marius – this, this is _him._ This is – this is who I’ve been – the _dreams_ , this – _this is him.”_

 

His words are scattered and all over the place, and Grantaire knows that that’s extremely out of character for Apollo just as surely as he knows anything else about this man. That said, if Grantaire tried to speak to anyone else right now – tried to even _attempt_ to explain what’s going on here – he’d not do much better with his words than Apollo just has.

 

Three of the four of Apollo’s friends are staring with varying degrees of confusion blended with shock and a little bit of _what the fuck,_ but the fourth is watching Apollo and Grantaire with eyes wide with surprised delight, and at Apollo’s words, a grin splits his lips wide.

 

“I _knew it,”_ he says, sounding straight up _joyful._ The guy is – he’s _enchanted,_ eyes shining bright and smile huge as he actually, legit, bounces on his toes in excitement. The braid draped over his shoulder is loosely done and has strands of hair falling out all the way up its length, and it has _flowers in it._ He’s wearing a polka-dot jumper, wide-leg jeans that are rolled up to three-quarters, and a pair of white sneakers with those curly-stretchy laces that kids have when they don’t know how to tie their shoes yet. The laces are bright purple. Grantaire adores the guy already.

 

“I _knew it,_ I _told you,_ didn’t I,” the ecstatic guy goes on, spinning to the other three and then back to Apollo, and it’s like he’s joy personified, he’s so excited. “You were all _go see a doctor, something’s wrong, maybe you have a tumour,_ but I knew, I _knew,_ didn’t I Jojo, I said it – I _said_ they meant something, the dreams, I _knew_ they meant _something_ and we just didn’t know what, didn’t I, didn’t I say?”

 

Apollo’s smile is soft and fond as he looks at his bouncing friend.  
  
“You did say,” he agrees, and he squeezes Grantaire’s hand with his own, then turns that soft, fond smile on Grantaire, and Grantaire’s mind blanks out for a moment, and he blinks under the force of it. It’s half a second before his brain reengages, and then he feels his own lips curl up at the edges as he returns the expression helplessly.

 

“So…” Bousset says from behind them, and Grantaire blinks and pulls his gaze away and turns to face his friends, Apollo moving with him. “So none of that explained what the hell is going on here,” Bousset goes on, staring from Grantaire to Apollo to the bouncing friend and back again, eyebrow raised. He and the others recognise Apollo from the paintings – they have to, they’ve spent so much time analysing them these last few days, and there’s no way they could mistake the guy in the paintings for anyone _but_ the guy standing with Grantaire right now – but that still raises more questions than it does answers.

 

Apollo opens his mouth to speak, and then seems to realise that he’s got no decent explanation, and stalls.

 

 “Should we – ” he starts, facing Grantaire.

 

“Yeah,” Grantaire answers, somehow knowing what he was going to ask. “How far – ”

 

“Half an hour, if we get a good run,” Apollo answers, and Grantaire pulls a face.

 

“I’m closer,” he says, and Apollo nods.

 

“Right,” he says, and then stoops – pulling Grantaire down with him by the hand – to start collecting their fallen books and canvasses, respectively.

 

“Is that – ” Grantaire starts, picking up one of the books with his free hand. “Were you – ”

 

“Researching the ’32 revolution, yes,” Apollo answers. “Aside from you, it was the only thing I could remember clearly about the dreams.”

 

Grantaire’s smile is helpless.

 

“I’m so not surprised,” he says laughing under his breath, and Apollo shoots him a quicksilver grin.

 

“Yeah, still not clear on what the hell’s going on,” Bahorel says lightly, yet oh so very pointedly.

 

“Oh,” Apollo says. “We’re all going to go –”

 

“Back to mine,” Grantaire finishes. “And once we’re there, we’ll – ”

 

“Explain,” Apollo says. “And then we’ll – ”

 

“ _Sleeeep_ ,” Grantaire interrupts on a groan, and Apollo nods sharply.

 

“Sleep,” he confirms, and Grantaire can hear the longing in his voice in that one word. God, Apollo must be as exhausted as Grantaire is. It is literally just adrenaline that is keeping Grantaire conscious, right now – if it weren’t for that, he could cheerfully lie down on the concrete below his feet and nap for a day or so, right in the middle of the street. “And then – ”

 

“I’ll paint,” Grantaire cuts in. “And then – ”

 

“It’ll be done,” Apollo finishes. Grantaire nods. It will be, by then. He still doesn’t know how he knows, but there’s only one dream left, and then all this – whatever _this_ is – will have run its course.

 

There’s silence for a moment.

 

“I don’t –” one of Apollo’s friends says, staring. This one has glasses. “That doesn’t – ”

 

“That was really freaky, what you two just did,” says another – the curly-haired one who’d first spoken. The freckled one still hasn’t said anything, and is watching everything with wide eyes and a Bambi-like expression.

 

“Sounds great,” the one with the braid says, enthusiastic, and drops down to help Grantaire and Apollo gather the last of their fallen things. Grantaire sends him a bemused smile.

 

“Jehan,” the bespectacled one says. “What – ”

 

“Hush, ‘Ferre,” the enthusiastic one – Jehan, apparently – says, and grips Grantaire and Apollo by their respective elbows and helps haul them to their feet. “They’re exhausted, can’t you see? Be grateful we’re getting this much sense out of them. Now, you,” he says, pinning Grantaire suddenly with his bright, joyful gaze. “How do we get to your place?”

 

Grantaire really likes this kid. Good attitude, no nonsense. Grantaire’s going to get on well with him, he can tell, and the smile that curves his lips is already a tad fond.

 

“Down this street, and left to the Metro,” he answers, and Jehan nods sharply and turns to start hustling not only his friends, but Grantaire’s too – confused protests and all – down the street.

 

A gentle squeeze of his hand gets Apollo to look back at Grantaire. The bespectacled one is arguing with Jehan, and so is Joly and Éponine, but Grantaire tunes them all out as Jehan gets behind them all and makes herding motions.

 

“I don’t know your name,” Grantaire murmurs, because it’s not coming to him – it’s sitting just on the edge of his consciousness, just out of reach, but he can’t catch it, can’t grasp the name and pull it into the light where he can see it. He knows so much about this man – knows what he likes to eat and doesn’t like to eat and knows that he disapproves of drinking to excess on any occasion except for at weddings and knows what he looks like when he’s angry and when he’s impassioned and when he’s relaxed and on the rare occasions when he’s saying something funny, knows how he rolls his eyes when someone tells a bad joke and how he huffs quietly under his breath and pretends not to smile when someone tells a good joke, knows how he walks and how he stands and how fiercely he loves his friends and his country and his people, knows he doesn’t fear death, and never has, never _will_ – but Grantaire doesn’t know his _name._

 

“Nor I yours,” Apollo answers, eyes locked on Grantaire’s, and their arguing friends are distant, distant background noise as they continue to not move down the street but Grantaire couldn’t look away from Apollo if you paid him.

 

“Grantaire,” he says simply, and watches the recognition flash over Apollo’s face.

 

“Enjolras,” Apollo returns, and – of course it is. Of course it’s Enjolras. Grantaire did know that. It’s like the name was just sitting behind a door in his mind, waiting for the man himself to come along and open it before it would let itself be drawn into the light.

 

“Enjolras,” he says, rolling the name around on his tongue, and Apollo – Enjolras – curls his lips as his eyes crinkle at the edges with warmth and fondness and pleasure, and Grantaire would give _anything_ to have that look directed at him for the rest of his days.

 

“Grantaire,” Enjolras returns, and traces his fingers along the edge of Grantaire’s jaw, gently tucks a wayward curl behind the artist’s ear.

 

Jehan’s voice breaks into their bubble.

 

“Sorry to bust this up, but none of this lot are going to move until you two do,” the guy says, exasperated as he gestures expansively at their gaggle of friends, who he’s managed to herd into a loose knot on the path, but who are apparently collectively refusing to move any further. Jehan looks like an irritated preschool teacher whose students are acting more like recalcitrant cats than well behaved children. 

 

Grantaire ducks his head to hide his huff of laughter in Enjolras’ collar (and Enjolras, _Enjolras,_ Grantaire could say his name for _days_ and not tire of it, now that he knows what it is), and he feels the way Enjolras’ lips curl into a smile against his hairline.

 

“Sorry,” Grantaire says, straightening up once he’s got his giggles under control and tugging Enjolras along by their still-joined hands as he starts to move towards their friends. “Sorry, we’re coming.”

 

Grantaire glances back to Enjolras one last time, and finds the blond man already looking back at him, a warm expression of fond wonder on his face, and Grantaire can’t help the smile that blooms on his lips.

 

“Come on, then,” Enjolras says after a moment, and tugs their joined hands gently, taking a step towards their gathered friends.

 

Grantaire goes willingly, and Enjolras’ hand is still so, so warm in his.

 

……

 

end

 

……


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What happens next, without the confines of good syntax and grammar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like I said last chap - this fic was meant to continue on for a while, but it just wasn’t cooperating. The flow was just – it was dragging, and too slow, and clunky, and no matter how I tweaked and rewrote it, it just… wasn’t working. So here’s what happens next, without the confines of good syntax and grammar. Apologies for the rambly style of it all, but hey - it gets the job done.

So we leave off with Grantaire and Enjolras heading back to Grantaire's place, with their respective friends a confused babble following along behind them as they go. 

The whole gang go back to G, J and B’s place (E & R practically fall asleep on each other on the train), and once they get there, Courf, Marius, Jehan and Combferre all exclaim over R’s paintings until Feuilly notices that the latest painting (the one of Lamarque’s funeral procession) has not only Enjolras in it but all of them, even ‘Ferre, Marius, Courferac and Jehan, which is WEIRD because R’s never seen ANY OF THEM BEFORE TODAY, and R doesn’t even remember adding them in??? He’s a tad freaked out by this development too?? Then there’s some general drama and confusion as they all try to work out what the hell is going on – it turns out that where R had been painting after the dreams, E had been describing them in great detail to hi friends, because he’s a guy whose best medium is the spoken word, so the four Amis with him had been given a really good look at what was going on in the dreams by way of Enjolras’ detailed descriptions. Enjolras’ four confer with Grantaire’s five and they confirm that yes, to the best of their knowledge, E & R have been having the exact same dreams, with the only difference being the perspective from which the dream is seen. Jehan is the one who suggests reincarnation (because by this stage they all know that the dreams were centred around the failed rebellion back in the 1800s, and if anyone here is the kind to lead a rebellion against the monarchy, it’s Enjolras, guys, come on) and Ferre is all “Jehan. Pls. I love and adore you, but we’re trying to come up with actual possibilities here,” and the whole lot of them carry on trying to work out what is going on here (because it obviously ISN’T reincarnation; HONESTLY Jehan).

Meanwhile, R and E fall asleep on each other on the couch. None of the others notice until it’s too late, embedded in their discussion as they are, and by the time they do notice, none of them can get either E or R to wake. UNTIL they wake up at exactly the same time with matching gasps a few hours later, both of them crying their eyes out (but happy???) and hugging everyone (even the ones they’ve only just met today) and asking, inexplicably, after Gavroche once they realise he’s not there. Éponine would like to know how the fuck Enjolras even knows about Gavroche. It’s Jehan who suggests splitting them up until they’ve each done their post-dream wind-down (painting for Grantaire, talking it out for Enjolras), and to compare notes after the fact. 

So they split the two of them up and R paints and E describes, and when the two groups come together at the end they find that, yes, the dreams apparently matched up perfectly again. They dreamed of their heaven barricade, this time, and they were all there (even little Gavroche), and they were all happy and together and they got to see the Paris they all had been fighting for. 

So now everyone is like “No, for serious, wtf is going on,” and Jehan is all “Reincarnation,” and ‘Ferre is like, “Jehan, pls,” but then that night he and Joly and Courf all wake up screaming, thinking they’ve just been shot, and then they all start to remember one by one, in reverse order to the order in which they were killed, and it’s Not Fun At All, but eventually they all remember everything and tears are shed and hugs are had, and they all move on with their 21st century lives in much the same way as they had been before – changing shit and offending politicians – but with the added bonus of a whole other lifetime of memories and the satisfaction of knowing that maybe their specific rebellion failed, but the rebellion didn’t quiet and eventually the tide of angry men who would not be slaves again rose up and overcame the monarchy for good. And there’s still oppression and shit that needs fighting; wrongs that must be righted, even in this day and age, but they’re here, and they remember, and they’re damn well gonna do something about it. 

E and R are together, and Bousset and Joly meet Musichetta and R moves out of the apartment and into E’s instead, and Marius meets Cosette and falls just as hard just as fast as he did the first time, and Grantaire and Enjolras argue ALL OF THE TIME because Grantaire knows he has as much chance of stopping Enjolras from Activist-ing as he has of stopping the bloody tide, but he does wish that Enjolras would be more fucking careful, damn it, and not go to rallies and get in fights and shit because this actually killed you last time, Enjolras, as in you actually died, there is a historical precedence here for you doing dangerous shit and being killed by it but Enjolras doesn’t stop and Grantaire goes with him and neither of them die and both of them live happily ever after. The end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that's how the story ends. 
> 
> Now then. WOW, what a monster of a fic. That is bloody huge, even with the end all mashed in like that. This is officially the longest fic I have ever written, across all my profiles. This was exhausting, but I am proud. 
> 
> In other news – I finally have a copy of Les Mis! I am finally going to read it! I’m a few chapters in so far, and the Bishop is amazing. What a human. I mean – the compassion and generosity alone makes him incredible, but then you add the quietly understated yet cutting sass of the man and – just. Wow. What a human. By comparison: Tholomyès, wow, what a douche.

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I could art. I’d love to be able to create some of the pieces Grantaire does here. I can conceptualise them, I can describe them, but I can’t actually create them. My talents lie in the art of words, I’m afraid, and not the art of oils and pastels and visual masterpieces.


End file.
